Talkin' Bout The Blue Angel
by J. Tyler
Summary: 1955, and a young Mystique is using her powers to make it in Hollywood. Magneto is in South America hunting Nazis. Premovies. How do they meet? Read and find out.
1. Putting On Her Face

A/N: Okay, this one is Kumadapuma's fault, because she mentioned Erik in connection with Angelina Jolie, and got me thinking. It's dedicated to Angelofsnow, because she got me feeling bad about my Mystique bashing in Stork. This will be a much shorter story than Stork, and should not interfere with it. The title is taken from the lyrics of a Squirrel Nut Zippers song.

Disclaimer: Don't own a thing, don't make a dime.

* * *

Date: 1955 Place: Eastern Europe 

The alarm went off. 'Roberta Rowan' reached over to silence it, blearily. It wouldn't do for someone to catch her before she put her face on, so to speak, and she didn't trust the locks on the door. She never trusted the locks on any door.

_I am so tired of being a heaving bosom for the cameras. Seven years in 'The Business', and what roles do I get? Secondary parts, and almost always the villainess. Why can't I be the angel for once? _

She rolled over and sat up. Hal Wheaton was filming a new version of Dracula, and the gimmick here was that the location was a castle the historic Dracula had lived in for a while. It was supposed to add authenticity to the movie.

_Ha. Authenticity,_ she thought, as she slid into the chair in front of the vanity table. The mirror needed re-silvering. _What a dump this place is. The finest hotel in Latveria, and it's no better than a two-dollar a week flophouse in L.A._

She pulled out a publicity photo of herself for reference, although she hardly needed it anymore, and began to put her face on…

First, the skin. Glowing cobalt just wouldn't do, not for 'Roberta Rowan', and certainly not for 'Lucy Holmwood', the victim turned vampire she played. As she concentrated, it faded and paled into Elizabeth Taylor's pink and white porcelain complexion, only more perfect in texture. Then the eyes—from vivid yellow they turned as blue as her skin was before, and their shape changed, too, the orbital ridges morphing into those of the young Marlene Dietrich. Joan Crawford's arching, expressive eyebrows, Garbo's forehead and cheekbones…

When she had first decided how she would look for Hollywood, 'Roberta' (Robin to her friends) had taken old movie magazines, and gone through them, looking for the best features of the most beautiful women in the world. Then she had carefully cut and pasted them together into a new face, the ultimate face, with Lauren Bacall's mouth, Katherine Hepburn's chin and jawline., Clara Bow's dimples, and Barbara Stanwyck's nose, until she was satisfied.

Then she copied it.

At first, she could only hold it for a few hours, and anything could break her concentration at the onset—one sneeze, and she was bright blue again, but she got better at it. Now… It was only when she slept that she reverted.

The studios noticed her immediately. She was phenomenally beautiful, after all, a walking dream. When she walked down the street, she caused traffic accidents. And she could wear clothes wonderfully—partly owing to the fact that instead of altering her clothes to fit her shape better, she could alter her body to fit her clothes perfectly.

However, while the roles came, the plum roles didn't_. I know why, of course. The casting couch. It isn't that I'm not ambitious, because I am, or because I like girls instead of men, like Lizbeth Scott. Or that I'm too pure. It's that any intimacy beyond a kiss or two shatters my control, and wham, there I am, blue lizardskin and all. Even if I'm not enjoying it very much._

_So I have an off-screen image of a beautiful icicle, and an on-screen image of a sexual volcano about to erupt. And the two times I tried…_She pushed the memories of those disasters out of her head. While technically she was no longer a virgin, she effectively might as well have been.

"Miss Rowan?" It was her maid, Madelaina, with her breakfast. "Good morning, miss. Here's your coffee. Mister Wheaton sent these chocolates."

"Very nice, but not at this hour. Put them there." She indicated the corner of the vanity, and picked up a powder puff. "Another day in the salt mines…"

* * *

"Good evening, Miss Rowan. Your car is waiting." One advantage to being what she was: indefatigability. She had boundless energy. 

On reentering her hotel room, the first thing she and Madelaina noticed was the mess—the brand new, still sealed box of chocolates had been torn into, and the frilly brown paper cups were strewn everywhere. The other foodstuffs she kept on hand—the tinned meat, the crackers, the peanut butter—had been similarly raided.

"Rats." stated Madelaina.

"This can't have been done by rats." she said, looking at it.

"Oh, yeah." said Madelaina. "Just ones that go on two legs, not four. I'm going to get the manager. Don't go in, Miss Rowan. They might still be there."

While she waited, she heard a sound—someone was crying, somewhere in her rooms. It sounded like a child. "Hello?" she asked in German, which was close enough to the local language. "Who's there?"

Another voice joined the chorus of wailing.


	2. Adopting Them

She advanced cautiously, aware that a child, if there was a child present, could well have an adult confederate. At least it seemed, at a cursory glance, that her clothes and furs were untouched, as was her makeup case. Dara, the leading lady, had boasted that the people of Latveria were so poor one could buy a strand of natural pearls or a sapphire pendant for a handful of lipsticks or the price of three hot dinners, and often showed off what she acquired on her days off—the real hallmark of poverty there, 'Robin' thought cynically, was that one had to bring one's own supply of toilet paper, and keep it under lock and key.

A variety of unfamiliar smells met her nose—fresh vomit, and unwashed bodies. She glanced in the bathroom, seeing no-one at first, but hearing stifled sobs. Stepping in, she beheld a puddle of vomit on the floor—either out of fear or from too much rich food eaten in haste, one of the 'rats' had thrown up all they had eaten. Still, she saw no one.

She opened the cabinet under the sink--and there they were. Two small children, pitiful in more than their terror—stinking, unkempt, filthy, ragged—and thin. Their arms and legs showed through rents in their clothing like little sticks. It was impossible to tell what gender they were—their hair was too snarled and matted, their clothing too old and shapeless.

"It's all right." she told them, still speaking German. "I'm not angry, and I'm not going to hurt you. Truly. You can come out. I think you must have been very hungry."

It hurt that children should be so suspicious, but she persevered, speaking gently to them, until at first one and then the other untangled themselves and came out. "Now, what are your names?"

"I'm Pietro," mumbled the one who seemed to have lighter hair, under the grime. "'M Wanda." said the other. The 'W' was pronounced with a 'v' sound, of course, 'Vanda.'

"I like your names." She said. "Which of you was sick?"

"That was my brother." blurted out the little girl. "He ate too fast."

"And where do you—?"

"Oh, Miss Rowan!" Madelaina was back, and she had brought help. "Don't get so close to them, you don't know what diseases or vermin they might have! Get them out of here at once, man!"

"What are you doing, breaking into hotel rooms and stealing things, you filth? I am sorry, Vreulen." Said the room steward. "I am sure they come from the orphanage down the street."

He made a grab for them—they both seized on her. "Please, don't let him take us, don't send us back there!" Their faces were buried in her shoulders, and they wept.

"AHah!—Got you!" The man swooped down and plucked them off her like a couple of unripe pears. "I am so sorry, Vreulen. I will send the housekeepers up immediately to put your rooms in order.:

"But—." He straightened up, a child thrashing under each arm, wailing and holding out their arms toward her. Her heart was not easily touched these days, not since she had left the family of her birth, after…That was another memory too painful to recall. Yet these children did reach somewhere in her soul.

It was too late. He was gone.

"Oh, Miss Rowan! Your suit!" She looked down. The children had dirtied the lapels.

"It should come out with some rubbing—you're so good at such things, Madelaina."

"And your hair. Let me wash it right now, Miss, with the special shampoo. I wouldn't be surprised if they had lice…"

The moment of compassion she had felt seemed to come and go just that easily, and she turned herself over to the ministrations of her maid.

* * *

The next morning, however, her manager came by. He was a sweet man, one of those who preferred other men to women, and consequently she felt safe around him, knowing he would never try anything with her. 

"And the title will be Stolen Hearts. This is what you're going to love: It's a Preston Sturgis script! Oh, he's not directing, somebody else is doing that, but I think it will be a great breakout role for you. The character is a shoplifter—Darling, aren't you listening to a word I'm saying?"

"What—Oh, Simon, I'm sorry. It's just that last night…" She explained about the children.

"Robin, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. What a fantastic opportunity for publicity, and all you're doing is mooning about it! Two little orphans break into your hotel room just so they can meet a real Hollywood movie star, that' s too good to pass up!"

"I don't think they had any idea who I am, Simon, I think they were half starved."

"By the time I'm done with this story, dear, that's what will have happened. Now you aren't needed on the set today, so let's go with it. Go change into that blue-grey dress with the white spots and the Peter Pan collar—and that cartwheel hat, they'll look matronly—which is to say, maternal. This will show the world a whole new side of you! I'll have my secretary find you some toys to give the little brats, along with some signed photographs, while I round up the photographers. I wonder who's least hung-over this morning? And use Fire and Ice lipstick, nothing pink!"

Soon she was at the head of a small army of people, swooping down upon the orphanage in question, a package of trinkets and photos under her arm. She had serious misgivings about doing this, especially since Simon had waved off any suggestion that the director of the children's home be notified first. "We don't want this to look staged.", he said, airily. "The genuine reaction, that's the thing."

The building which housed the orphanage was dark, grim, and squatted at the end of a row, next to a beer bottling plant.

"If there are so many children here, why can't we hear them?" she asked, as Simon rapped on the door for her.

"Because they're in class?" he wondered.

"On a Sunday?"

"Sunday school, then…It's not locked! Well, we'll just go on inside." He was getting nervous about this, too.

Inside was worse than the outside. It reeked of unwashed bodies and rank cooking grease, of sewage and mildew.

"I didn't think it would be like this…" Simon looked around, deflated.

"What were you were expecting? Everything to be all clean and tidy? I told you what condition those children were in. Weren't you listening to a thing I said?" she looked at him. Followed by the press, they went in search of someone, some adult, in charge.

It only got worse. There were bunk beds everywhere, some in the wider hallways, with thin straw mattresses and moth-eaten blankets on them—no pillows, no sheets. Most of them were occupied now, at mid-day, by children with the vacant, snubby faces of physical retardation. They had been strapped down. A dreadful, fecal odor wafted off them,

"For heaven's sake, don't photograph this!" Simon protested as one of the studio photographers raised his camera. "People don't want to see this kind of thing."

It was Mike, who had aspirations beyond glamour and publicity shots. "Like hell I won't," he declared. "They need to see it." The other photographers followed his lead, and started snapping.

"It's as bad as Auschwitz," commented one.

Everywhere they went was filth, squalor, and starvation. The few children who were loose hid, frightened, when these strange adults approached. There were no classrooms, no playrooms, only rooms where beds warehoused children like pallets of factory seconds.

_I sent them back to this._ 'Robin' thought. _Without thinking. Without protesting_.

They found the staff down in the kitchen, a fetid hole where cockroaches speeded around underfoot—three women and two men. They were drunk. Questioning them, 'Robin' got directions as to where the facility superintendent's office was. She also lied to them, vengefully, telling them the group was a delegation from an American children's charity, and every single staff member would be fired without a reference by the end of the week.

She left the photographers behind her as she headed down the hall. "Wait up, dear!" called Simon, but she left him to catch up.

When she opened the superintendent's door, he started, taking his hand out from under the smock of a half-grown girl, guiltily. She jumped away from him, and ran, her dirty face striped with tears. "What do you want?" he barked. "There are no visitors allowed without an appointment and a reference!"

"I wonder why not?" 'Robin' said. "Last night two children escaped from here and took refuge in my hotel room. The night manager at the hotel brought them back here, but that was a mistake. I want to adopt them." She had made her decision while walking down the hall. She could not save all of these children. Perhaps she could get no one to listen to her tale of conditions in that terrible place, but those two, the two who had pleaded not to be sent back, those she would rescue.

"Oh, you do, do you? You're one of those American movie stars, aren't you? These things can be arranged—for the right price." The man leered at her.

Simon reached the door and stood there, panting. "Robin, what are you doing? Did you say 'adopt'?"

"I did," she told him, and to the superintendent, "I am sure they can, but not in this case. Many American photographers and reporters have been all over this building today, and between what they have seen and what I saw just now, I believe you will facilitate the adoption of these two for nothing."

"You're going to report us? To King Stefan's ministers? They don't give a shit!"

"No, to the World Health Organization, who will. The children's names were Pietro and Wanda, and they're brother and sister. I don't know their last name."

"You want them? Truly? Hell, lady, I'll fill out the paperwork this hour. Those two, they're wicked. This is the fifth orphanage they've been in, and they're only four." He began scrabbling in his desk.

"I find it hard to believe that at the age of four, they can be as wicked as you. What is so bad about them."

"Things…happen when they're around. Their mother killed herself, that was the beginning of it. These gypsies took them in for a year, but they died in an epidemic. Disasters follow them like their shadows—and if you take your eyes off the boy, he's gone, just like that." The man snapped his fingers.

"Robin, darling, I think you should think about this." Simon hissed.

"Simon, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. What an unparalleled opportunity for publicity. A real Hollywood movie star rescues two children from Hell on Earth." she returned, furious with him.

"Oh," Simon said. "Oh! You're right—this will get you major coverage!"

"Here. I need witnesses. Then they're yours."

"I want to see their birth certificates, the parents' death certificates, proof of immunization, medical—." She would need those things to get them passports.

The superintendent whooped with laughter. "Proof of immunization? Lady, there aren't any such creatures in this place. Only the rich can afford that kind of thing here. You're a movie star, you get them immunized if you want it done."

"I will!" she snarled at him.

"Here's the birth certificates, though. And the mother's death certificate. Who knows where their father is, he's thought to have been sent to a Soviet gulag. Disappeared eight months before they were born."

She took them. "Pietro and Wanda Lensherr, children of Magda and Erik Lensherr…"

"Of course, you could look for him in hell, because those children are the devil's spawn if ever there were." he concluded.

Two of the staff were sober enough to witness the adoption, and Robin attested to her good moral character and ability to support the children financially. The photographers caught up, and kept snapping.

"Come on," one of the boozy witnesses. "I'll show you where those two hide. You'll wish you hadn't worn that dress, it'll be ruined..."

Their choice of hiding place at the hotel seemed to be instinctive. In one of the orphanage bathrooms, there was a hole where the pipes went into the wall, and a dank smell drifted out of it, of mildew and slime.

"That's where they'll be. They're all yours now; have fun." With a coarse laugh, the woman disappeared.

_How can they have possibly fit in there?_ 'Robin' knelt down on the floor, aware of the abhorrent state of the floor, but ignoring it. Mike snapped a shot of her as she did so.

"Pietro? Wanda?" She heard a knocking sound, as if someone had shifted and bumped a pipe. "Do you remember me? Last night, I found you in my room. You ate my chocolates until Pietro got sick. I came back and found you. You asked me not to let the man take you back here, but I did. I—I'm sorry. I didn't know what this place was like, but now I do. I came for you. I'm your mother now, and I'm going to take you away with me, to my hotel for a while, and then home to America."

Her throat was growing close with tears she could not suppress. "You'll like it in America. I have a house there, where it's warm and sunny all the time, and my kitchen always has lots of good things to eat. You can have chocolate everyday, if you like. Please come out." She was starting to feel foolish. "And tricycles. A red one for Wanda, and a blue for Pietro, I promise. Lots of other toys, too."

There was more knocking. A little face appeared in the hole, winced at the flash of cameras, and disappeared once more. "No, it's all right. Don't be afraid. No one's going to hurt you. I won't let them. And no one will take you away from me ever again."

Two faces appeared this time. "Mama?"

"Yes, my loves. Mama."


	3. Six Months Later

Approximately six months later, in Brazil:

Erik Magnus Lensherr was strolling down a street in Rio De Janeiro when he saw the American magazine _Photoplay_. It was not the photograph on the cover which got his attention—a color picture of a smiling redhead with the bluest eyes he had ever seen (The caption read 'Roberta Rowan's Family Album!—RKO's smouldering sensation on-screen is an adored, _adoring_, **_adorable_** angel to her children off-screen') but the line at the bottom, which said, in smaller typeface 'The Mutant Menace—what they are—who they are—and why you should be afraid!!!'.

_And I suppose every last one of us is a Communist as well,_ he thought, as he handed the newsstand owner money, and took a copy of the _International Times_ as well as the magazine. Walking to a nearby sidewalk café, he took a seat at an available table, and gave an obsequious waiter his order. A couple of vacationing American co-eds, girls about twenty years old, eyed his fit physique, clad in a tropical weight wool suit of light grey, hardly darker than his hair, looked at the surprisingly youthful face between the hair and the suit, and started speculating furiously, if surreptitiously, about his age.

"Carmie, I'm telling you, he can't be forty yet. Some men do go silver early."

"Not like that! He has to be at least fifty—but what a dish!"

He overheard them, and smiled wryly to himself. He was thirty. At that young an age, he was, had been, orphaned by the Holocaust, married, the father of a daughter, bereaved by the loss of that child, abandoned by his wife, displaced by conflicts—and now a agent of the American government, employed and empowered by them to hunt down those Nazis of note who had escaped the Trials at Nuremberg. He was also a mutant. Who knew what he would become next?

Opening _Photoplay_, he found the article, and had it read before the waiter returned. It was not particularly technical, nor in-depth, and contained neither more nor less factual information than he expected—which was about a needle in the proverbial haystack's worth. There were a few photographs of the more divergent cases of mutantism—and one of an Amish child suffering from six-fingered dwarfism, a genetic disorder due to too small a gene-pool, and not mutantism. Either it had been included out of ignorance or to add filler to a scanty story.

Tossing it aside, he opened up the _Times_, hoping to read that his latest Nazi capture made the news, when a name in the magazine caught his eye as the breeze off the Bay of Guanabara riffled the pages. _Lensherr_.

He took up the magazine again, thinking he must have imagined it, that his brain had seen some fragment—_Lens_, perhaps, given that it was a photo magazine—and filled in the rest.

Under a photograph of two smiling children, a boy with hair like his, and a girl with Magda's brow and his mother's chin, ran the caption _'Born Pietro and Wanda Lensherr to Magda and Erik Lensherr, now deceased, the newly christened Peter and Wanda Rowan have seen their lives go from nightmare to dream overnight, thanks to their adoptive mother, glamorous screen siren Roberta Rowan_.'

It came as a profound shock to him. _She must have been pregnant when she left me…Either she did not know it, or she hadn't told me. _He devoured the article, ignoring the coffee and sweet rolls left at his elbow. There was very little meat to it; consisting mostly of posed photographs showing the children with their adoptive mother in a variety of settings around the house and a few in other locations such as an ice-cream shop.

Here there was a picture of Roberta Rowan sitting on the floor, both children half in her lap, reading to them, the better part of a yard of shapely leg showing. _No woman sits like that unless she knows she has perfect legs, _he thought, cynically. _There can be no doubt why this article was run—publicity. No doubt that's why she adopted them in the first place._

Next, a photograph of the actress getting ready to go out, with Wanda watching intently as her 'mother' chose a necklace, while Pietro watched, bored, from an ottoman by the bed. _'It'll be Wanda's turn soon enough!_' read the saucy caption. _'Watch out when this one's old enough to stay up late—she'll break as many hearts as her beautiful mother.'_

There were photographs of his children racing one another on their tricycles, while Roberta Rowan watched, laughing, her hair tumbling loose over her shoulders. He scrutinized her face carefully, looking for something that would repel, something wrong, something imperfect, a venal look, a sign of debauchery, greed, cynicism, but he found nothing. She was very, very beautiful—she didn't seem to have a bad side from any angle. There was a tenderness in her face whenever the camera caught her looking at the children—but then, she _was_ an actress. She was only twenty-four, he read, and unmarried. _So what's wrong with her?_

A visit to the ice-cream shop, where the children got smeary-faced as she drank an ice-cream soda. Playing outside with them in the garden. Going to the toy store. All three of them at the movies—not one of hers, they weren't ready for her movies yet, but an animated feature by Disney.

_Nauseating._ The last photograph showed the three of them kneeling in prayer by a bedside. _'"Every night, we say prayers for our parents in Heaven" says Peter. "And we thank God for our new mother here on Earth." his sister adds._'

He closed the magazine, found he could not bear to shut away the faces of all that remained of Magda, and their love, and opened it again, to the first shot, the only one without Roberta Rowan.

_I am not going to allow her to—to pimp my children in order to promote herself. She may have adopted them, but I never gave my consent. Magda may be dead…_

The sudden painful realization ran through him, an actual physical pain that began in his heart and traveled upward to pound in his temples. _Magda is dead._

_Magda is dead_.

* * *

In Santa Monica, California:

'Robin' looked at the same copy of Photoplay magazine, and smiled to herself. _To look at the photographs and read those captions—which, quite frankly, make me feel ill—anyone would think life around here over these last six months has been one long sweet song._

_All right, so it has been sweet. But not smooth or easy. And certainly not predictable_.

The first day proved a harbinger of what was to come. After the adoption, she took them to a café near the hotel, where the proprietor refused to seat them where other patrons could see them. That was fine with her; she shed the press corps, took a private parlor, and ordered a light lunch, mindful that their shrunken, empty stomachs would not hold much food.

They had no table manners at all, eating with their hands or with a spoon gripped in their fists, gobbling what was set in front of them as if it would be snatched back at any moment—and in that orphanage, it might well have been. Lessons in table manners could come later, she decided. It was not the time to start nit-picking. Speaking of nits—and lice—Madelaina was going to be furious with her. Both children had infestations.

Pietro didn't chew his food, he just swallowed it, and of course most of it came back up on the floor. Careful questioning revealed that it hurt him to chew. She added 'Dentist' to the list growing in her head, and ordered soup and hot chocolate for him—and then Wanda cried for the same. She ordered it.

After paying the waitress ten times what was owed, she took them back to the hotel—and plopped both of them in the tub. They were too young to bother about modesty, so she pulled the foul rags off them and sent Madelaina out to buy clothing, lice treatments, shoes, anything she could think of. When the maid protested, 'Robin' told her "All right, I can go, but then you get to bathe them." The Latino woman left in a hurry.

It took three changes of water, two wipings-out of the tub, a whole bottle of 'special shampoo', lots and lots of soap, and a pair of nail scissors to cut the knots out of their hair, before they were clean. Wanda turned out to have red hair, not unlike 'Robin's' own, and, most astonishing, Pietro's was a cobwebby silver-grey. _Where did he get that, I wonder? _She trimmed his hair into something like a boy's short, neat cut, and gave Wanda an inexpert page-boy cut, the effect of which was ruined when it dried, because she was a curly-locks.

During all of that, they splashed and played while she sang, making it into a game. Then Wanda _didn't_ tell her she had to use the toilet. That required another bath…

All of them had pruney, wrinkled hands when they were done. "Look at the two of you! I don't know when I've ever seen such beautiful children." It was true, gaunt as they were, there was harmony in their bone structure. For a moment, all was perfect and peaceful…

Then she couldn't get a separate room for them—not even for hard American currency. Madelaina got _that_ look on her face, and told her employer she could either look after those two during the day, when 'Miss Rowan' was filming, or at night, when she was sleeping. So they would have to share her room…

She got a cot for Pietro, and took Wanda into her own bed, but not before she told them every fairy tale she could think of. At the end, she told them, "You may wonder if the stories I just told you were true. I don't know, but some of them must be," I hope this works, "because I know of someone who is under a fairy enchantment, just like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White."

"Who?" they wanted to know.

"Me." She proceeded to tell them that ever since she was fourteen, every night while she slept, she turned into a sort of fairy herself, with blue skin and yellow eyes. "And when I wake up in the morning, I have to look at myself in the mirror for a quarter of an hour while the spell wears off for the day. And you must never, never tell, or they might take you away from me."

"Really?" Wanda asked.

"I don't believe it." snorted her brother.

"You'll have to believe me tomorrow morning." she replied.

"How can the spell be broken? Do you need a handsome prince to kiss you?" Wanda's eyes got big and round.

"I don't know. The fairy never said."

She dreamt of Jason that night, Jason, her first lover, Jason, the first man she ever killed. He reached over for a cigarette in her dream, just as he had that night, right after their lovemaking, her first time ever, struck a match, and dropped it on the bed. It went out, but he started yelling. Springing up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, dark blue against the darkness, and realized she had reverted—.

To quiet him, and keep her neighbors from calling the police, she put her hand over his mouth. She was terrifically strong—she knew that—but she should not have killed him, not just by putting her hand over his mouth. Perhaps he had a weak heart, or couldn't breathe through his nose. Maybe she accidentally crushed his windpipe. She never found out. All she knew was that he went limp and when she let go—he was dead.

In her dream, she did what she had done in life—put on his clothes and his face and his voice. Wrestling him down to his car, she went to two of the bars he frequented, as him, drank a few bourbons (spilling it down his sleeve—she could not be drunk for what she had to do)—and then drove out of town. Stopping at a dangerous ravine, she put his clothing back on his corpse, and put him in the driver's seat.

Then she shoved the car over the edge.

No one had suspected her.

Now she woke, almost crying again for him. She had liked him so much—almost loved him. She could have loved him. She didn't want to kill him, she didn't mean to—.

She found Pietro had left his cot, to curl up on her other side. She didn't have the heart to wake him or put him back, and soon, she fell back asleep.

In the morning, she woke to find two pairs of blue eyes boring into her. _Worse than a pair of cats_, she thought.

"It's true!" breathed Wanda, in pure wonder.

"Yes. And you must never, never tell."

TBC…


	4. Deficiencies in Education

She didn't for a moment imagine they wouldn't tell—that wasn't the point. The way in which she had told them ensured that they wouldn't be taken seriously. Any adult who listened to their tales about fairy enchantments would smile indulgently, and when those same adults mentioned the children's wild talk about how her skin turned blue when she slept, she could laugh it off and say that Wanda and Pietro had been very impressed when they saw her with a blue beauty pack on her face.

Then, too, there was the language barrier. The twins spoke no English when she first took them in; like all small children, they picked it up quickly, but for a while, once they were home in Santa Monica, she was the only person they could speak to besides one another. That helped.

For a few weeks, life with her children was picture-perfect. They listened so hard to all she told them, making great strides in table manners and good behavior. Even Madelaina and Fritz, her Swiss 'houseboy'—at fifty-two, he was hardly a boy—who did the cooking, the cleaning, and drove when she did not care to—said that Wanda and Pietro could hardly have been better behaved or more grateful.

Then the honeymoon was over. Almost overnight, she learned why the twins had gone through five orphanages. It began when Fritz complained of an ant infestation and of a foul odor. The exterminator he called in discovered that they had pulled up the flooring in their playroom and hidden food in there—sugar cubes, dinner rolls, and slices of meat, grown green and white and furred thickly with mold. Further searching turned up other caches of food in their rooms. When the food was thrown out, the twins became hysterical. 'Robin' took them into the kitchen, threw open every cupboard and showed them all the food, telling them there was plenty of food, there would always be plenty of food—but two days later, Madelaina turned up bread in the bottom of Wanda's closet again.

Their table manners disappeared almost overnight, they broke toilet training, picked bouquets of flowers for her—from other people's gardens or in the park and threw temper tantrums when asked to do anything. They cried when she reprimanded them. She cried afterward, when she was alone.

She consulted book on child-rearing, which didn't help, and a child psychologist, who did.

"The food-hoarding is easy to explain," said the doctor, a middle-aged woman with sympathetic eyes. "Given their history, they know that food is not always going to be there when they are hungry, and it may well take years before they can relax about it. I suggest you allow them to keep non-perishables, well-wrapped, of course, in a special place designated for it. That way they have the security which comes from knowing it is there, and you retain control of the situation.

"As for the disappearance of their table manners, and other such 'bad' behavior—you have to realize what they want most of all in the world is you—your love and your attention. When you were teaching them table manners, no doubt you gave your full attention to every bite they took, correcting the way they held their spoons, demonstrating how to use a knife and fork, and praising them when they got it right Once they learned how, you stopped paying them that kind of close attention. So they are doing what they can to get it back—even if that means you glare and scold them. All attention is good attention—when you've never had any."

"So what do I do?"

"When you sit down to dinner next, make a game of it. Have a special prize for the one who has the best table manners. It doesn't have to be anything large. Praise them when they get it right—and if their manners are too atrocious, tell them you can't eat dinner with people who have such bad manners. Then get up and leave them to eat alone.

"The same holds true with other forms of attention-getting behavior. Pay them attention when they're good, and deprive them of it when they're being bad. When they learn behaving badly gets them less of your attention, they'll come around. And never tell them they're bad children. Tell them they've done something bad, but not that they themselves are bad."

It took a while, but it worked.

Not perfectly, and not all the time, but it worked.

It even helped with what she couldn't tell the child psychologist about—that the children were like her. They were different than most people, even if they looked like any other children. She loved them even more for that. How strange and wonderful that as lonely and isolated as she was even in a crowd of friends, she should have found and adopted two children who were kin to her in a way even giving birth to them could not equal.

Pietro could move faster than the eye could track, faster than a cheetah could run. When small objects around the house disappeared—like car keys or earrings—she knew to catch Pietro around the waist, lift him up off the floor, and check his pockets.

Wanda—made things go wrong. Disastrously wrong—such as the car breaking down just before 'Robin' had to go to the studio, or a brand new bottle of Chanel Number Five exploding all over every single pair of evening gloves she owned right before a very important party after all the stores were closed for the day.

Curiously enough, that turned out to be a plus, as 'Robin', desperate and furious, put her mind to work on the problem—and reasoned out that as she could already change the color and texture of her skin, she could make it appear as if she had gloves on, both to the eye and to the hand. It was a great success, and much more comfortable than wearing a layer of kidskin or silk. When she had leisure, she planned to explore that new aspect of her powers and see how far she could take it.

'Robin' soon came to recognize the approaching disaster by the look on Wanda's face, and how to redirect it, making a scarecrow for the child to blow up and putting it in the barbecue pit. When it wasn't possible to hustle her down there, a firm look and a "Wanda, don't." usually handled the situation.

It seemed as though she was coping. Now, six months later, as she looked at that magazine, with the stupid, made-up captions and the mostly-artificial posed photos showing a perfect, glossy life which was nothing like their real ones, she could reflect on the difference. It wasn't as smooth and pretty as_ Photoplay_ made it look.

It was much better than that.

She flipped through the other pages of the magazine, looking at the people she knew, the ones she didn't, the ones she liked and those she detested, when she came across an article which made her shudder. 'The Mutant Menace' It was illustrated with photographs of the deformed and the bizarre, and it told of those with strange and mysterious powers who lived among real human beings.

She had never before had a word to describe what she was—and what Pietro and Wanda were. Mutants. After reading the article twice—which took less than fifteen minutes—she called the local bookstore, and asked them to set aside for her anything and everything they had on mutants. Her education was deficient, and she was about to make up for that.

* * *

Erik Lensherr's education in the films of Roberta Rowan was deficient, and he was about to make up for that. He looked up the movie listings, and found that two of her films were playing in local theatres—_Don't Look Back_, a crime drama, and _Crimson Lips_, a retelling of _Dracula_.

Leaving the café, he went to the nearest movie house currently showing one of her films, the crime drama, which turned out to be a surprisingly stylish re-telling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orrin Ellhouse was a jazz musician and an alcoholic, Eulalie, Roberta Rowan's character, his singer-girlfriend. Orrin missed their wedding because he was still drunk after the bachelor party, and Eulalie stormed off into the arms of the King of the Underworld, the married Harry Derwood, whose wife, Persis, was pathologically jealous. Harry, the 'Hades' character, owned a nightclub, and made Eulalie the headline act.

Orrin got wind that Persis planned to kill Eulalie, and was on the way to warn her, but he stopped for a drink first—the equivalent of Orpheus looking back before he had Eurydice clear from the boundaries of Hell. One drink became a dozen, and the hapless drunk arrived at the nightclub only to find Eulalie dead. Grief-stricken, he gives up drinking forever, only to die in an a drunken driving accident with his next girlfriend, Maddie—the 'Maenad'.

While only the black-and-white 'B' picture following a Technicolor 'A'-list movie with Jane Russell which was completely forgettable, _Don't Look Back_ had better directing in its favor—more interesting camera angles and visuals, a more memorable story and script—a phenomena Erik had noticed before—because the studios had less invested in their 'B' pictures, they paid less attention to them, and directors were free to do more or less as they pleased.

It also had Roberta Rowan, who, he had to admit, was good. She could act, which was rare, and she had that indefinable quality the camera loved, that which made a few—a very few—people stars, which was rarer. 'Muy guapa!" murmured a local man a few seats away, when she made her first entrance. 'Very sexy.' It was true. When she was on screen, it was difficult to look anywhere else. Her death scene had several audience members gulping into their handkerchiefs.

He left the theater with a new sense of respect for the young actress—whatever else she was, she had earned the accolades bestowed on her by the press.

That did not mean she was a proper and fit person to bring up his children, however. He meant to get full custody of them, and soon. But curiously enough, he found he was also looking forward to meeting this elusive, heavenly creature of flickering light from the silver screen, this woman named Roberta Rowan.


	5. For Charity's sake

Erik Lensherr had his ticket for Los Angeles, a reservation at a hotel in Santa Monica, where Roberta Rowan had her beachfront house, and a ticket for a charity event she was to appear at later that night—some sort of combination of fashion show and talent show, he gathered.

He knew the whereabouts of one last Nazi outpost in South America, and before he caught that plane to LA, he cleaned out the last nest of vermin. This one was a very large jackal indeed: Overstrumbahfuher Hans Richter, formerly of the Waffen SS. It would have been entirely routine—except that Richter wasn't on the list which his superiors gave him, the list of Nazis they wanted captured and brought to justice.

Richter was on a very different list: the list of Nazis who were useful to the United States government.

So it was that Erik Magnus Lensherr, codename Magneto, overstepped his boundaries, and got himself put on a list: the list of people to be exterminated with extreme prejudice. 'Make him suffer before he dies,' was the directive. Unknowing and unwitting, he was about to lead the assassins directly to his family…

* * *

_So who am I?_ 'Robin' stopped in the middle of getting ready for the charity show to look into her own eyes in the make-up mirror. Except that they weren't her eyes, they were 'Roberta Rowan's' eyes. _And I am not Roberta Rowan, as much as I tried to convince myself I was._

_Yet I'm certainly not 'Raven Darkholme' either, Dove's little sister_. Their parents, Donald and Vera Darkholme, had two dark-haired, blue-eyed daughters. Dove, the elder, was named for them—the **Do** of Donald combined with the **Ve** of Vera. Born six years later, she had been named Raven for no better reason than that Shakespeare had seen fit to include the two in a single line in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_—'Not Hermia, but Helena I love. Who will not change a raven for a dove?' It wasn't that she was second best, not that, but she was never the first to do anything. Until the day a sunburn blistered, and peeled away to reveal blue skin underneath…

Ugly, thick skin, slightly grainy like an iguana's hide, bizarre yellow eyes. Nobody would want to touch her, want to kiss her, would look at her as she really was, and think her beautiful—.

Except that morning, when she told the children to wait 'until I have my pretty face on', Wanda had looked at her with a surprisingly mature 'All Grown-Ups Are Idiots' expression, and explained very carefully and patiently, "But I _like_ your blue face, Mama. It makes me happy when I see it."

"Me, too." her brother insisted.

"Why?" she asked, shocked.

"Cause you're our Mama." replied Pietro.

Wanda, more thoughtfully, put her head to the side and said, "Because it's like when the sky is all blue and your eyes are the sun shining in it. When I see you in the mornings I feel all warm inside—."

That had been a little too much for her. She had to hug them both to her, blotting her tears on Wanda's blouse. She almost wanted to cry here and now, again, while Madelina brushed and pinned her hair.

So whoever she was, she wasn't 'Roberta Rowan'. She was someone who was loved just as she was, and all the name she had at the moment was 'Mama', which was more of a role than a name. Who she was…had yet to be determined.

There was one thing she knew, however.

_I will never let anyone take them away from me. I'll kill anyone who tries. Anyone.

* * *

_

The charity event was to be a black tie affair, and he needed the proper attire—a dinner jacket—or, as it was commonly known, a tuxedo. His native intelligence told him that a rented tux would be immediately identifiable as such to anyone who looked at him, so he decided to buy one off the rack and have it altered to fit in the eight hours or so until he needed it. Whether it was self-respect or pride that demanded it, he didn't know.

In the meantime, he did such things as visit a barber and a jewelry store. A tuxedo shirt required a set of shirt studs, and as long as he was doing this, he was determined to do it properly.

His early anti-Nazi efforts in Israel, with the assistance of Charles Xavier, had left him in possession of a large quantity of Nazi gold. No small portion of it came from the gold teeth, the jewelry and wedding bands of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, wrenched from their dead bodies after they were pulled from the gas chambers, en route to the crematoriums. He therefore saw it as, in a way, his inheritance from his late family, his parents, cousins, aunts and uncles. The Lensherrs had been a large family once—and perhaps they might be again, some day. Was there a better way to use that money than to get his children back?

Thinking of Charles Xavier made him wonder whether he ought to get back into contact with him. Erik had few enough personal connections in the world that losing one would impoverish his life measurably—and Xavier might be able to advise him on how to gain custody of Pietro and Wanda. He was an American, and ought to know something about the American family court system.

The hours flew by, and before he knew it, he was emerging from his taxi in front of the Beverly Hills Wiltshire hotel and presenting his ticket for admission,

The admission price, which was high by any standards, included a dinner of doubtful digestibility, during which an array of lesser stars would parade around in a collection of designer evening gowns and perform musical numbers, after which there would be dancing, something along the lines of the 'taxi dancer' ticket system—one paid for a dance with the lady of one's choice, cash up front.

That entitled a man to a dance, nothing more—unless she were willing. The girls were expected to be charming, to dance and smile and make conversation. In return, the man got a dance with a pretty woman, prettier and a better dancer than he might otherwise have the courage to approach—and without the possibility of rejection hovering over the encounter. The fee in a normal dance hall would be a dime or a quarter—here it was to be ten or twenty dollars, which would go to charity rather than to the girls in question.

This meant he would be able to see her, to speak to her, without the need for a formal introduction. Entering the hall, he was dismayed to find, upon inquiring, that almost all her tickets had been sold. He was no great dancer; the days when, as a small boy, he and a girl cousin carefully shuffled to the strains of a waltz in a dusty hall as part of their music lessons were more than twenty years dead and gone. What had her name been, that cousin? Rachele, he remembered. She was taller than he was. He heard that she and her family had ended their days at the concentration camp of Dachau.

So many deaths…

He paid for the last dance of her evening, a waltz, the only dance he would buy, despite the hinting of the woman who ran the schedule, suggesting that Debbie Reynolds still had several dances free, as did Paula Prentiss. Taking his seat, he waited.

"First in our parade of 'Goddesses' is the exotic Maria Montoya, as 'Parvati', the Indian goddess of mercy, in an evening dress by Schiaparelli, draped sari-style with an attached scarf which can be pulled up over the head for an especially dramatic look…"

He endured Patricia Neal in 'Junon', a strapless evening gown in pale blue silk netting with dark blue, green, and bronze spangles, Jayne Mansfield as 'Venus', dove grey silk netting with dyed-to-match feather shaped paillettes (whatever they were), Jennifer Jones as Diana, and so on, each one then going on to sing or dance or play some musical instrument.

"And now we have RKO's sizzling siren Roberta Rowan, as Hawaii's fiery volcano goddess 'Pele'. A sheath dress of flame-colored silk satin is covered by an overdress of shaded grey guipure lace, hand dyed and hand-embroidered with beads and sequins in copper, red and gold to suggest molten lava. The ensemble is completed by a simple necklace of black Tahitian pearls."

The photographs, the movie, they hadn't done her justice. Her skin was velvet, her eyes lapis lazuli, her hair that rare shade of red that had hints of purple to it. She was tall and so graceful her walk was like a dance. Her face—her expression said, 'Yes, I am beautiful. But it's not important.' She wore her own perfection causally, as though she could put it on and take it off like another pair of shoes. What gave him that impression? He wasn't sure.

She proceeded to walk, turn, smile, and pause, as had all the other young and not so young lovelies. As she headed for the microphone, she had to pass his table, and her eyes fell upon him. Some trick of the light made them seem to flash yellow when she recognized him—and she did recognize him, no doubt about it.

* * *

The resemblance between the man at the third table to the left, and Pietro, was so marked that she nearly stumbled. His hair was the same cobweb-silver, his eyes the same blue. Although with sufficient food in him every day, Pietro's face was growing rounder with that childish softness which most called 'baby-fat', she knew what the bones underlying it looked like, and that man, that man at that table, was where they had to come from.

Erik Lensherr—their father, the man who disappeared eight months before their birth, supposed dead, supposedly sent to a Soviet gulag.

_Oh, no…_

_I really don't want to have to kill him._


	6. A Bad, Bad Girl

A/N: I'm doing a Moulin Rouge here—taking a song from our era and transposing it to an earlier time. The song is Fiona Apple's Criminal, arranged in Fifties' musical style. Of course I don't own it.

* * *

Her heels clicked on the floor as she approached the microphone. Smiling, she said something to the leader of the band, who nodded in reply, lifting his baton. A dark, insinuating theme rolled out to meet the undulations of her form as she swayed gently—piano, bass, and saxophone blending together.

Leaning forward, she sang—no, she was half moaning, half growling. "I've been a bad, bad girl. I've been careless with a delicate man. And it's a sad, sad world, when a girl will break a boy just because she can—." The dress had a high slit in it, which parted to show more than a glimpse of leg.

He reached for his glass, nearly upsetting it, and gulped ice water. His tie was strangling him…

"What I need is a good defense, cause I'm feeling like a criminal. And I need to be redeemed to the one I've sinned against, Because he was all I ever knew of love…"

The beading on her dress coruscated with every breath she took. Her eyes half-closed, as if she concentrated on her ascent to the moment of orgasm. Her mouth opened, and she sang, "Heaven help me for the way I am. Save me from these evil deeds before I get them done…"

The temperature in the room seemed to rise as she sang of guilt and shame, the need to be cleansed of her sins. Images of her kneeling, but not in prayer, drifted unbidden into his head and sent tendrils down to his groin. Roberta, submissive and humbled but delighting in it, Roberta, shuddering in the satisfaction of her desire—.

When she finished, the male population of the room seemed to let their breaths out in a rush. It was a shock to remember that there were other people in the room, so intimate had that moment seemed.

"After that, I need a cold shower," joked a man at his table.

"I'll have a cigarette." said another.

He agreed in feeling, if not in the exact wordings. He was now a man in conflict. On the one hand, he was more convinced than ever that she should not be allowed anywhere near Pietro and Wanda, but on the other…he would gladly take her upstairs to any of the hotel rooms and figure out how to get her out of that flame-colored sheath with its overdress of shaded grey lace…

The lights came up. She cast a sad, lost glance his way, confusing him more. Who was the real Roberta Rowan, the vulnerable glimpse he caught, or the temptress?

* * *

He was deliberately tormenting her. All through the dancing, he sat, watching her as she fox-trotted and cha-cha-ed, rumbaed and tangoed with a succession of interchangeable partners, the wolves and the stutterers, the mashers and the ones with sweaty palms.

_Let the blow fall,_ she thought. _Let it fall, and get it over with_. He was a monochrome portrait in white, grey and black, his skin tones washed out by the lighting, the only exception being his ice-chip eyes.

But no, he did not approach her, not until the last dance, the Valse des Fleurs, that old, old waltz. She was standing alone at the open door to the terrace, drinking in what fresh air she could.

"My dance, I think." She could hear a British accent when he spoke.

"I suppose it is," she agreed, looking at his ticket. "Don't tell me who you are. Let me guess—Erik Lensherr." She held out her arms resignedly, as the band struck up the tune.

"Quite right."

"You sound British. I hadn't expected that." He was handsome. _Of course he would be. Pietro and Wanda were so adorable that of course their parents would be attractive._

"My brothers and I had our lessons in English from a former professor from Oxford. He retired to Gdansk to write a definitive history of Poland in the Thirteenth Century. He never finished it, but he was a good tutor."

He had to be able to feel the tension in her, the way the muscles of her back had knotted up. "Why are you here?" For all of that, they moved together well, compatible in their heights, in their dancing.

"I'm not sure if this is the right time and place to bring it up. I came here wanting one thing, and now… I don't know what I want."

"Maybe you won't get any of the things you want. Life is like that." she said, bitterly. "At the orphanage, they said you disappeared eight months before they were born. You were thought to have been sent to a Soviet gulag, and were presumed dead."

"They were wrong. I am not dead, as you can see, nor was I sent to a Soviet gulag, and I was not the one who disappeared. My wife—left me, after our eldest daughter died. Until I picked up a copy of Photoplay magazine, I had no idea we had two other children. Is she—is Magda dead?"

"Yes. I have a copy of her death certificate."

He drew in a painful breath, and his hands tightened on her for a moment. "How did she die?" How odd they could go on talking like this as they danced…

"Of exposure. She went out—she was caught outside during a winter storm. I'm sorry."

"Thank you." They danced in silence for a few moments before he spoke again.

"That article—if it can be called an article—it was sickening. The syrupy sentimentality, the exploitation—."

"Yes, I know. I didn't write it. The photographer told us how he wanted us to pose There was no interview involved, the magazine's editors made up whatever captions they wanted, and it went into print."

"Then why did you do it?"

"Because if you throw the dogs a bone now and then, they don't rip you to shreds when you go out!" she flared. "Doing such articles protects our privacy. What is it that you want? Tell me, and get it over with."

"You are by far the most beautiful woman I have ever held in my arms. I don't want to upset you."

"Then you're a little too late."

"Very well. I never agreed to any adoption. I want my children."

Her eyes shut, swiftly. "You want to see them?"

"I want custody of them."

"No." She shook her head "Please. I don't want to have to—to fight you. Don't try to take them from me. Believe me when I say it would be wrong—for them, and for me—and for you, as well."

"How so?"

"Because…For one thing, I'm the only mother—the only parent they remember. They were passed from one orphanage to another for years, after their foster parents died. It's taken months for them to build up trust in me. You saw those pictures—I tell you, they don't tell the true story. Besides, what would you do with them? Have you remarried? Where do you live?"

"All those questions can be answered with—are you all right?" He was looking at her with great concern in his face.

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"Because you're looking rather blue around the mouth." _No. Not here, not now_.

"It's nothing. A reaction to distress, that's all."

"Are you sure? The hotel probably has—."

"I'm all right!"

"If you say so—. Let me ask a few questions of my own. Why do you want them so badly? You're young, you're beautiful, you'll marry soon and have children of your own, and what will happen to Pietro and Wanda then?"

She gave a humorless, desperate laugh. "That won't happen. They're the only children I will ever have."

"Is that so certain?"

"I—Look, the dance is ending. I can't talk any more tonight. Be at the Brown Derby tomorrow at two in the afternoon. I'll have my manager meet you there. His name is Simon—he'll bring you by the house afterward." She turned and hurried toward the ladies' lounge. _I'm like Cinderella. I have to be home before I fall asleep, or the magic will wear off. _

Madelaina was waiting for her. "Are you ready, Miss Rowan?"

"Yes. Get me out of this thing—it's too fussy. Send back the pearls, turn the coachmen back into mice, and be careful with those slippers—they might break."

Madelaina shot her an uncomprehending look. "They're satin. They won't break."

"Just a joke." _Anyhow, I'm not Cinderella, I'm an ugly stepsister. Or stepmother. Something like that. So enamored of the children she'd kill their father in order to keep them. And I don't want to have to kill him—I rather liked him. Please let him see reason. I don't want to have to kill him._


	7. At the Brown Derby

It wouldn't be Simon who went to that rendezvous at the Brown Derby, of course. She was going to go herself, wearing his face, voice, and persona. If necessary, it would be 'Simon' who quietly killed Erik Lensherr and disposed of the body. The real Simon had an alibi for the day; an enthusiastic collector of stamps, he would be giving a lecture with an accompanying slide show at the Greater Los Angeles Area Philatelic Society when she met Wanda and Pietro's father. The twins themselves would be in Kindergarten at the Montessori School in Santa Monica.

Dressing in the man's suit she kept on hand for such transgender outings and carrying an attaché case, she caught a taxi and was at her destination at a quarter to two. The Brown Derby was a landmark of Hollywood, a silly-looking building in the shape for which it was named; a round-crowned hat. Entering, she glanced around, and was not surprised to find Lensherr waiting in the foyer seating area.

"Mr. Lensherr?" 'Simon' approached him, making it clear it was a question. _Oh, lord. He's even better-looking in the light of day. I thought it was all the tuxedo and the low lighting. What would Simon do if he had to talk seriously to some man he found very attractive? Just be serious, I suppose. Flirting could get him into dangerous waters._

"Yes. You're Miss Rowan's manager, I take it?"

"I am." Shifting the attaché case to the other hand, 'Simon' shook Lensherr's hand. "No talk until we have a seat, all right?"

"Very well." A modest tip got them an isolated booth.

"I'm not entirely sure why we're here." Lensherr said. "It seems to me there's very little purpose to this meeting."

She raised an eyebrow as she had seen Simon do hundreds of times. "There's a great deal of purpose, Mr. Lensherr. Robin—that's what Miss Rowan's friends call her—told me all about last night. You made quite an impression on her, I must add." _A touch of flattery never hurts._

"Oh?" Lensherr sat up straighter.

"Yes. She's badly frightened—for the children's sake, of course." _Neither does a dash of ice water._

"I see. I certainly never meant to frighten her—and the children have nothing to fear from me."

"Don't they? I don't know how much thought you may have put into your plans, but consider it from the point of view of the children. All their lives, they were shuffled from one orphanage to another, knowing themselves unwanted and unloved. Finally, someone comes along who does care about them, someone who rescues them from an existence so hideous one photographer compared it to Auschwitz—."

"I think if anyone is qualified to compare something to Auschwitz, it is I," Lensherr said, suddenly tight-lipped. He pushed up his sleeves to reveal a tattooed number.

_I didn't know about that_. Recovering herself, she opened the attaché case, and took out the issue of Life magazine which had the article on the orphanage. "Then you will be the best judge of the conditions these photographs show." She slid it across the table to him.

He opened it. Mike's photographs had turned out well. The squalor, the filth, the retarded children tied down in their beds, the drunken caretakers—it was all there. And she herself of course, with the real Simon.

She watched his face. "Mr. Lensherr, I gather you feel your children are being exploited for their publicity value. Let me tell you now that between the time when this story came out, when Robin rescued and adopted them, until the article in Photoplay, nothing has appeared about them in the news. She answers questions about them when she's interviewed, once in a while she's photographed with them when she picks them up at school, but she isn't exploiting them. She wants them to have as normal and quiet a life as possible."

"I had no idea—." Lensherr murmured, looking at the photo of her coaxing the children out of the hole in the wall. "What a hideous place…"

"And you should know." 'Simon' commented. "That is where they came from, Mr. Lensherr. That was the fifth, and by all accounts the worst, of the orphanages they were put in. Can you imagine what she means to them? Can you imagine how they will react if you come into their lives, and say, 'Hello, I'm your father and you have to leave your mother and live with me from now on.'? They will hate you. They will be afraid. They will cry for her, the only trustworthy adult they have ever known, and—."

"You can stop there." Lensherr said, roughly. "I see your point. But last night! The way she had the tongues hanging out of men's mouths, panting after her, during that song!"

"It's an act, Mr. Lensherr. You needn't think she's dragging your children along to orgies—or entertaining men in her home. If you listen to what people say about her, you'll find she's considered quite the prude—lives very quietly, reads actual books—.Lately she's been reading up on mutants, don't ask me why." _That's my ammunition if all else fails—telling him they're mutants. If that doesn't work, I'll just have to break his neck. _

"There's a great difference between the real person and the public persona. Barbara Hutton married Cary Grant thinking she was marrying 'Cary Grant'. Rita Hayworth herself said, 'Every man I have known has fallen in love with 'Gilda'—her greatest role—'and wakened with me."

"All right, then. What if she marries, and has children of her own?"

"She won't." By this time, their food had arrived, and 'Simon' waited for the server to leave before glancing around. "This is in the strictest confidence. Do you understand?"

"I—what are you about to tell me?" Erik Lensherr looked suspicious.

"Nothing scandalous, but damaging to her career nonetheless. Can you promise you will keep this a secret?"

"If it won't hurt the children."

"Ah. I can see I'm going to have to trust you. Robin has a heart condition, Mr. Lensherr, which makes it unlikely she will live beyond forty." It was a lie, of course. _He saw my lips turn blue last night. He'll believe this_.

"That makes having children of her own out of the question. It makes marriage very unlikely. She'll live at least another ten years, fifteen with care. Long enough for Pietro and Wanda to reach their twenty-first birthdays, perhaps."

Lensherr's handsome face contorted with concern and pity. "That poor girl. All that beauty to come to…nothing. Is there no hope?" _Good, he's coming around. That's sympathy I'm reading on his face. Oh, if only… _

She would have liked to kiss him—not while wearing Simon's face and a male-appearing body, of course—and do more than kiss, if she knew she could keep from reverting. Something about him appealed to her, as few other men did—even in Hollywood, a town stuffed full of handsome men.

"Not as medical science stands today. It's very unlikely to happen before she's thirty-five, I'm told. Youth and vigor will be on her side for a while longer—as long as she doesn't tax her system. That's why she lives so quietly. Given what you have just learned, will you agree, here and now, out of court, to a shared custody arrangement? Pietro and Wanda will continue to live with her. You will find somewhere to live in the area. Then you and she will work out a mutually satisfactory schedule of times and days you'll see your children. Major decisions concerning the children will be made together—just as if you were an amicably divorced couple, like so many others in this town."

Lensherr was quiet for a long moment. "You and she do realize that any court would grant me full custody in an instant, don't you?"

"Entirely so, Mr. Lensherr, but would it be in the best interest of Pietro and Wanda?"

"All right. I'll agree on the condition that if she marries, I get full custody of them immediately—and if anything happens to her, there is to be no other guardian."

"She wouldn't have it any other way, Mr. Lensherr. Now that's settled, shall I take you by her house? If we hurry, we'll be there in time for the two of you to get the children from school."


	8. Picking Up the Children

_So many revelations in so short a time…I can hardly absorb them all_. Magda's death—although he felt it, was a muted pain, the ache of an old injury. No doubt it would flare up at some future time, but as he stepped out of the taxi in front of a high concrete wall, he felt worse about the untimely death which was to come, the time bomb which beat within Roberta Rowan's breast. How cruel, that some accident of birth or genes should have given her so much beauty and so little time.

Simon Markham, her slightly effeminate manager, stopped at a grilled door in the wall and called in. "Jorge! Miss Rowan is expecting me."

"Why is there barbed wire all along the top of the walls?" Erik stopped, casting a penetrating look upward.

"The last tenant before Robin was Howard Hughes." explained the manager, as a Hispanic man, evidently the gardener, based on the evidence of his clothing, opened the door from the inside. "Thank you, Jorge."

"You need say no more." The owner of RKO pictures, as well as a multi-millionaire industrialist, Hughes was paranoid, reclusive, and weird enough for anything.

Inside the high walls was a shady garden. Cool green lawns and feathery pepper trees overhung a rectangular pool where a sprightly fountain cast an arc of water through the air. And then there was the House. Erik had to stop and look.

"Impressive, isn't it?" asked Markham.

Very modern and two stories high, it was the shape of a blocky 'I', the end bars being concrete and steel and the central portion which linked them, glass. The living room, dining room and kitchen were clearly visible, a free-standing concrete fireplace wall dividing the living room from the dining room, the kitchen cabinetry and a cooking island dividing the dining room from the kitchen—very open, airy and spacious.

Several glass panels hung open to blur the distinction between indoors and outdoors still further, and as they crossed the lintel into the living room, Erik heard the rush of the sea. On the other side of the house, clever landscaping made the swimming pool look as if it extended out into the Pacific Ocean, although beyond the pool, the land sloped sharply downward to meet another concrete wall, with a similar door to the one which they had come in from the street, only leading directly to the beach.

"Are the foundations safe?" Erik asked. "As close to the ocean as this is, you'd think it could be washed away by the next big storm."

"Safe as solid rock, or so I'm told. The architect sank creosoted pillars down into the sand, much as they built the city of Venice, the one in Italy, that is. This end of the house—" Roberta Rowan's manager indicated the sidebar by the living room, "has her rooms, the children's, their playroom, and so on. That end has the servant's quarters, the pool house area, guestrooms, and the garage. She'll probably be up-stairs. If you wait here, I'll pop up and call her. Robin, dear…" He disappeared.

Erik was left to cool his heels in the living room area. Roberta Rowan, or whoever decorated the house for her, hadn't tried to fill such a modern house with 18th century antiques, but instead chose pieces as up-to-date as the architecture—steel-framed sofas, elliptical tables, wood and leather chairs, a rug made of leather strips instead of wool tufts. _What sort of person furnishes her house like this? Someone who chooses to have no past…_

The fireplace wall had a bookshelf on the living room side. He was just stepping closer to it when she emerged from the stairwell behind him. "Mr. Lensherr. I'm so glad Simon brought you—and gladder still that we could come to an understanding."

He stood for a moment, struck by the picture of health, youth, and beauty she presented. She wore a sunny yellow blouse and a flowing silk skirt with peaches on a yellow background. The frivolous little straw hat which perched on the side of her head picked up the green of the leaves on the skirt, and an absurd matching handbag swung from her wrist. It was impossible to think that she could be dying. "Good—good afternoon, Miss Rowan. But please, I hope you will call me Erik."

"I will--if you call me Robin." She smiled at him. "Shall we go and get the children?"

Her chauffeur drove them the few blocks to the school. "I do like to walk there and back, but we're a little pressed for time today." she chatted.

"Miss—." At a raised finger from her, he capitulated. "Robin. I do want you to understand that this…arrangement will continue only as long as it is in the children's best interest, and if at any time—."

"You'll take them away. Yes, I understand." Her smile had no warmth, humor or happiness in it.

_Dealing with her is not going to be easy. She's so beautiful, so tragic…and so desirable. _He was alive to the thrust of her breasts under the yellow blouse, the curve of her calves where they emerged from under her skirt. _I want to see her look happy. I want to **make** her happy. _That last thought snaked its way to the forefront of his mind directly from his libido, making him uncomfortable in more ways than one. To conceal his discomfiture, he asked, "Have you told them anything?"

"Not a word. Ah, here we are. It's ridiculous taking the car out for so short a distance, but then…" The chauffeur pulled over in front of a long, low white building surrounded by flowering shrubs. Children ran around outside it, calling and waving to their parents or nannies.

Not waiting for her driver, Robin flung the car door open and called, "Wanda! Pietro! Here, my darlings!" When they saw her, they lit up and ran over to her outstretched arms.

"Mama, Mama!" they chorused.

"I've got to tell you what we did today—." Wanda began.

"Me first! We drew pictures of us and our house and you—." Large pieces of paper were waved in the air.

"—and we had Music, and I got to play the triangle, and—."

"Just a moment, just a moment!" Laughing, Robin closed the car door and settled the twins into the facing seat. "I have a surprise for you as well. Home, Fritz." she said to the driver. "Can you guess who this gentleman is?"

Two pairs of blue eyes—hers the deeper blue of cornflowers, his as light as chicory blossoms, searched his face intently. "No." Pietro said. Wanda simply shook her head.

"I'm—your father." he said awkwardly. Every sensation seemed to be doing its best to imprint this moment deep into his memory—the faint whine of some flying insect in the car droned in his ear, the edge of the seat creasing his leg, the flowery perfume Robin wore— the somber fear that crossed the faces of his children.

"But our Poppa is dead." Wanda ventured, timidly. "That's why we got put in the orphanages."

"No. I'm not. I am very, very sorry that you were ever anywhere near such a terrible place. What happened was that before you were born, your mother—." Their eyes swung to Robin, "your other mother and I were parted, and she got lost. Although I looked, I couldn't find her, and since I couldn't find her, I couldn't find you."

"We don't have any other mother. Just her. _She_ found us." Pietro's chin came up stubbornly, in a way which was hauntingly familiar. Anya had poked her chin in just that way when something was not to her liking.

"And through her, I found you. I saw your pictures in a magazine, and I got on a plane right away to come to you." _I am so relieved that I did not simply pull them out of what I perceived to be her evil clutches. What a scene they would have caused—and what would I have done with them? This is bad enough._

"So what happens now?" Wanda asked.

"Now," Robin said cheerfully, "we go inside, you get into your swimming suits and show your father what good swimmers you've become, and we all have some lemonade." The car pulled into her driveway, and the gardener closed the gates behind it.

From across the street, three men watched from an unobtrusive car. "So why aren't we moving on this already?" one asked.

"Because before, Lensherr had nothing to lose. A single man, alone in the world—how could we make him suffer enough? Oh, a few hours of torture would have him howling for mercy—but that's not suffering. Not to a man who was in Auschwitz. Now he's found his children, and he's going to have a movie star for a girlfriend, from what it looks like—we'll give this a little time to develop. Then it will mean so much more—when we take it all away."


	9. On Impulse

As the twins scrambled out of the car, they left their artwork behind; Erik, picking up the papers, commented "How odd—both of them have drawn you with blue skin." He held up their pictures, showing, in primitive, childish scrawls, themselves, the house, the ocean behind it—and her. She was the only element which wasn't 'normally' colored.

_Oh, no_. She forced a laugh as she swung her legs out of the car. "That's easily explained. A few mornings ago, they burst in on me when I had on a beauty masque—a blue-tinted cream. The eye area gets a different cream, because the skin is more delicate there. That one's yellow. It made quite an impression on them, as you can see."

He laughed too, as he stood up. "All over your arms and your—er, as well?" They had drawn her in something sleeveless, which showed her neck and arms.

"When I step in front of the cameras, they photograph more than just my face—or hadn't you noticed?" She and Erik were walking together up the path to the house. She knew he had noticed—she caught him looking at her in the car, at her legs and her breasts.

"I've only seen one of your movies, so far—although I intend to correct that. _Don't Look Back_ is the one. It was a good movie—and you were the best thing in it."

"Thank you. RKO may be the smallest pond in the movie business, but there's an advantage to being one of the big fish in it—I do get better roles there than I would elsewhere. It's something."

They stepped inside, and a child's voice immediately called out, "Mama? I need help!"

"Oops. Got to run." She flashed him a brilliant smile and headed into the family wing.

The twins weren't changing into their swimsuits. Both of them were waiting for her in the hall, fully dressed. "What's going on? Who needs help?"

"It's that man." Wanda looked up at her. "Is he really our father?"

"Yes. Can't you see how he looks just like Pietro?" Although she hadn't demanded documentary proof from him, between the wedding photograph from the children's file and the evidence of his face, there was no question in her mind as to who he was.

"Then what does he want? Why is he here?" Pietro demanded.

"He's here because he is your father, because he wants to see you, so he knows you're safe and well."

"He's going to take us away with him, isn't he." It was not a question, it was a statement that came from Wanda's lips. "Oh, Mama, I don't want to go with him! Don't let him take us away! He didn't find us, you did!"

"Hush, now, don't cry. You don't have to be afraid. He and I talked about this before you came home. He won't take you away with him. Truly. He wants the same things for you that I want—that you should be happy and safe, that you should be living where there are good schools and people who love you. All right? You know some of your friends' parents are divorced, don't you?"

The twins nodded, Wanda first, then Pietro. "And most of them live with their mothers but they still see their fathers, right?"

"Uh-huh." Pietro said.

"That's how it's going to work with us. You'll keep on living with me, and he'll visit us, he'll take you out places now and then. It'll be fun—you'll see."

"Nothing good ever lasts for long." Pietro's eyes were huge in a too-pale face.

"Oh, love, I know it seems like that, but it'll be all right. I promise. You'll see. You'll see. Come here, both of you." She knelt and gathered them in. After a long hug, and a few gulps from the twins, she let them go. "Better now?"

"I guess." Pietro blurted. Wanda just nodded.

"Then why don't you go get into your swimsuits, and I'll get into mine?" She hadn't planned on it, but why not? Actually, the twins' reaction had been a surprise to her; she had feared they would take to him so enthusiastically she would be shoved aside, if not forgotten.

Erik overheard some distressing noises coming from the family wing, but he thought it wiser not to investigate. The twins had turned five since Robin had adopted them; in those five years he had not forgotten what it was to be a father, nor a husband. Magda had never been far from his thoughts. _I always thought we would be reunited, even though I was on the other side of the world. I never imagined she was dead…_

He had been faithful to her, despite their separation. Opportunities had come his way, for he was young and good-looking, but…he was married. Even when he wanted to set that aside, his conscience would not allow him. His body refused to obey, and…nothing happened.

But now he was free, and he knew he was free. That would make a great deal of difference.

Robin… It was not that Robin was so much more beautiful than Magda, but Robin had what Magda had not; money, and what it could buy—cosmetics, clothing, servants, and most of all, time.

Living where they had, behind the Iron Curtain, mere existence had been difficult—all their clothing was at best second hand, make-up was not to be had even had they the money to spare for it, and Magda had not only their daughter Anya to care for, but all the other housework to do, while he worked two jobs, and hard labor at that, to support them. The strain and stress would have aged her quickly.

Robin, in contrast, was a hothouse flower; protected from the harsh elements, seemingly pampered, but forced to bloom continuously—until she would die before her time. Not a pleasant thought. He tried to push that away.

Now she emerged from the family wing, shepherding the children before her, they in navy blue and white swimsuits, and she…dear God. She was wearing a bathing suit herself, red with a teal green bamboo print, and at least four or five inches of skin showed between the top and the bottom. Granted, she had a sort of skirt wrapped around her waist, concealing her legs but still… He concealed his surprise, and stepped forward.

"Are you afraid of swimming, then? You look so reluctant." He knelt down and addressed the twins directly. "I would have thought you would like to swim."

"Wanda and Pietro have something they would like to ask you."

Wanda immediately ducked behind her, while Pietro glared up at her and said, through gritted teeth, "Mama, no!"

"Yes. The best way to find out what you want to know is to be brave and ask directly. I know you can do it." She drew Wanda out from behind her, and cupped their heads protectively as she urged them forward. "Go ahead."

"You're not going to take us away from Mama, are you?" Pietro asked, hesitantly.

"No. Right now, this is the best place for you to be," he said. _Not to mention that I have nowhere for them to stay, and witnessing their heartbreak would tear my heart to pieces._ "Does that help you feel better?"

"You promise?" his son persisted.

"I promise that as long as your Mama is a good mother to you, and you are well and safe and happy, I will not separate you. Now, it seems to me that someone mentioned lemonade, and I'm thirsty."

That assurance broke the tension, and soon the twins were splashing and giggling while he and Robin sat at the poolside with their glasses. They talked about the difficulties she had faced in getting the twins home—visas and passports, inoculations and papers, and about their school. When she said, "You'll stay for dinner, of course," he accepted without hesitation.

Pietro and Wanda insisted on showing him their rooms while they changed for dinner. Somewhere along the way he went from being 'Father' to 'Poppa', as first one, then the other clamored for his attention, pulling him by the hand from one room to the other to show him their little treasures. Finally Robin came and got them, saying that Fritz would start waving knives around if dinner was ruined.

Eating with them as a family was painful, for he could not help but remember Magda and Anya, and their meals. Robin managed the twins deftly through the meal, correcting Wanda's use of a fork here, and telling Pietro not to spit out gristle, and with their merry chatter to make up for his silence, he got through it.

Afterwards, the twins bid him good night before they went off to play for a while before bedtime, Wanda actually asking, wistfully, "Will you come back soon, Poppa?"

"Yes," he told her. "I will. Your mother and I will have to work out when—but soon."

"Fritz will drive you back to your hotel, of course." Robin informed him.

"I can call for a cab. I don't want to be an imposition."

"Nonsense." She summoned the man, who accepted the order with polite dignity.

That left the two of them alone.

She was standing close to him in the growing dusk, so close that he could smell her, could feel her warmth… The dying light darkened her hair until it was darker than blood, as dark and intoxicating as wine. He had to say something, but what?

"Thank you, " he managed, finally. "Pietro and Wanda clearly took their cue on how to react to me from you, and you, for whatever reason, very generously decided to act as though you welcomed my appearance upon the scene, that you weren't afraid of what I might do. You made this meeting and this afternoon a positive experience for them—and for me. It was truly kind and unselfish on your part, and I'm very grateful."

"You don't have to thank me. It wasn't as unselfish as you think. You see," she said, glancing at him and then away, "I didn't know how they would react. I was afraid that your claim on their hearts as their father, their real father, would overwhelm whatever affection they have for me. Acting sour or angry could only weaken that—or so I thought."

"You seem to underestimate and undervalue the effect of your kindness and your love for them."

"I don't know…They've been with me six months now. As significant as that may be now, you're going to be their father their whole lives." She glanced at him again, a brief darting of the eyes, and it seemed to him as though she were afraid to look at him for long, afraid of the strength of her feelings and that she might betray them.

On impulse, he caught her in his arms, and kissed her—kissed her as he wanted to kiss her, not reverently or respectfully, but with the ardor of a man whose celibacy was chafing him. For a moment her response was all he could have wanted, she didn't simply surrender to the kiss, but returned it with an equal passion, her body melting against his like a sigh.

Then a tremor passed through her, and the next thing he knew, she was pushing him away, both hands against his chest. He staggered backward, gasping for breath.

"I'm sorry," she said, turning away. "Please—please don't do that again."

" No. I should be the one to apologize. Only—you're so beautiful, so desirable—."

"Only on the outside," she said, in a small and heartrending voice. "Appearances can be deceiving."

He froze, thinking of the implications of that statement. _What can she mean by that? She is—she seems—as lovely inwardly as she is on the outside. I had come to believe she truly cares for Wanda and Pietro, that it isn't all a publicity stunt—how she has acted today has been proof enough of that—or so I thought._

"Are you confessing something to me?" He tried to keep his tone as light and casual as he could, as if he were joking.

"Nothing at all. Just remembering my own childhood. I—was unwanted, too. Once I reached a certain age, that is. Although my life was nothing as bad as theirs was, in that place, there are certain…similarities. I'm sorry, Erik. For the children's sake, I hope we can be friends, but I can't be anything more to you. Or anyone." Her voice broke on the word _can't_.

He wanted to see her face, but her back was toward him. "Robin—."

"There's Fritz with the car now. I suppose this is goodnight—When will you be coming back again?"

He hadn't thought about it. "Ah—tomorrow? At the hour the children get out of school, like today—only early enough to walk there and back. Only I would like to take you—us—out to dinner."

"Good—If you can make it a regular routine, at least for a while, it would be best for the children. Not the taking us out to dinner part, but coming to get them after school—How are you situated financially? Will you be looking for work? I don't even know what business you might be in."

"I've been a—courier for a few years now. I have a substantial sum put aside, so I won't be needing to look for work any time soon. Well. Good night. I hope I didn't offend you?" he offered.

"By kissing me? No. It was—a nice kiss. Good night."

* * *

A\N: Sorry this update has taken so long--I've been sick with a sinus infection. Blech. 


	10. Found Out

Two weeks later: It was his first time out with Pietro and Wanda alone, and they had gone to the park, had lunch, and he was beginning to run out of ideas. _I don't want to take them to a toy store, not the first time we're out together, or they might come to expect it. _

Spotting a flower shop across the street, he inquired, "If I were to buy your mother a bouquet, would you care to help me choose them?"

"Yes!" "Let's, Papa!" were their responses.

"Then each of you take my hands before we cross, that's right…"

A cheerful bell rang out as they entered the shop, which was elegantly white and gold, and the youngish man behind the counter straightened up. "Hello. How may I help you today?"

"We're here to buy flowers for our Mama." Wanda announced.

"You are, are you? Well. What kind does she like best?"

"Umm…I don't know." She looked up at her father. "Poppa?"

"I think all ladies like red roses. Let's start with some red roses." He smiled at her.

"All right—shall we say half a dozen, to get you started?" The florist went to his cooler, and began.

They wound up with an extra large bouquet which included yellow freesia, deep blue delphiniums, and orange lilies.

"It's a very—cheerful combination, if I may say so, sir."

"Very eye-catching." he agreed. Speaking of eye-catching—There was a display of bridal flowers, silk ones, of course, along the opposite wall. _There's a thought. If I asked Robin to marry me—what would her answer be? It wouldn't just be for the sake of the children. I— might as well admit it. I've been falling in love with her. The real girl, not the movie star, the one who claps her hands and laughs for joy with Wanda and Pietro, the one who goes wading in the creek and catches minnows, and doesn't shriek at spiders or bugs_. They had taken the children to the mountains just the day before, with a picnic lunch.

_I already know about her heart condition. We have two beautiful children together, who could ask for more? There are ways to avoid conception. Although, if any intimacy at all is impossible… I would like to speak to her physician together with her, and find out how serious her prognosis is. Perhaps it isn't as severe as her manager thinks_.

The bell chimed out as another customer entered the shop. Pietro boasted, "Our mama is a movie star. She's Roberta Rowan."

"Is she? What a lovely lady she is. (That'll be nineteen-fifty, sir.) She's one of my favorites."

"Mine, too," said a familiar voice from behind them. It was Robin's manager. "Hello, Master Pietro, Miss Wanda! I'm so glad to see you!"

"Hello, Mr. Markham." the twins chorused politely.

"And you must be Mr. Lensherr. So glad to meet you finally." Simon Markham extended a hand.

Erik looked at him for a split second, puzzled. "Haven't we met before?"

"I'm sorry, I don't believe so." The manager was much as Erik remembered him—medium height, brown hair crowned with a natty hat, effeminate mannerisms—but something was wrong. The man he had eaten with at the Brown Derby was right handed.

This man was left handed, which he proved when he wrote a message on a card at the counter. "I'll have the usual sent here, please." He handed it to the florist.

"I'm almost sure I met you at the Brown Derby, two weeks ago—it was the nineteenth."

"The nineteenth? No, it couldn't have been me, I was at a meeting of my philatelic society that day."

"I—see. I'm sorry. I must have you confused with someone else—unless you have a twin."

"Me? Oh, no. Not unless there's something my parents haven't told me."

"Mr. Markham, do you mind if I ask you a question about Robin?" Erik asked, ignoring Wanda, who was tugging on his hand.

"Ask away. I can't promise I'll answer, though."

"I understand. Is she in good health, that you know of?"

"Robin? Healthier than the proverbial horse. That girl could keep going fifty miles after I drop down dead."

"You know that for a fact?" _She lied. Not only did she lie, she found a confederate to help her, someone who could almost double for Simon Markham_. A throbbing pain began in his temples. _She lied to me._

"Absolutely!" said her manager cheerfully. "The studio insists on insuring the health of its stars, just in case. So they have a doctor check each of the major players over before a picture starts filming. Nothing gets by him."

_Why am I not more surprised than this? I'm angry, but I'm not surprised. She had too much energy, that's what it was. When we went to the mountains, she was the first one up to the top, she hardly rested all day, and the children were worn out before she was. Anyone who could do that has a heart in perfect condition._

"Well," he said, remembering his manners. "Thank you. That's good to know. It was a pleasure meeting you."

"Can we go now?" asked Pietro, tugging on his arm.

"Yes, Pietro. A little more patience, please."

He made the drive back to Robin's—correcting himself when he thought of it as home—in such grim silence that Wanda asked, timidly, "Poppa? Did we do something bad?"

"No, sweetheart. Your Poppa's thinking of something unhappy, that's all…."

_As much as I love them, it is nice to have the house to myself for a while_, Robin thought, stretching out on the chaise lounge by the pool. _Just me and a trashy novel and a big bowl of strawberries. _The trouble was, _Peyton Place_ had sex in it. A lot of sex. Soon she was squirming as she read, running her fingers over her lips, and wondering why she had never noticed before how suggestive strawberries were.

_If only…I like Erik. I wasn't expecting to, but I do…I would like to do more than just kiss once. Maybe—maybe my control is better now._ But experimenting with him was a bad idea. The last thing she wanted to have to do was kill him. He was good for the twins, for Pietro especially, and she had to think of them and their needs, not her own.

Speaking of whom, there they were. "Hello, my loves! Did you have a good time with your father?"

She gave them both a big hug as she listened to their excited tale of a trip to the park. "And we bought you a bouquet of flowers, see! Poppa has them." Wanda pointed.

"How beautiful!" She stood and accepted them from him. He had the strangest expression on his face—as though he were trying to work out some difficult problem in his head.

"We helped pick them out." Pietro told her.

"I can tell. These are the most beautiful flowers anyone has ever given me. Now it's Fritz' night off, but he's left everything for us, just as nice as can be, so it's time for you to go wash your hands and faces, while I put these in some water, all right?"

"All right!" They ran off, while she took a vase from the coffee table and went to the kitchen. Erik followed her, and stood watching while she recut the stems so the bouquet would last longer.

"So was your first solo flight?" she asked, setting the vase down beside the sink.

"It went well…" he began, but then he took a step forward, trapping her against the counter. Taking her face in both hands, he kissed her deeply, even savagely, and his long body was pressing against hers, full length.

She let herself give into it, kissed him back, exploring his lips, his tongue. _Just a taste—surely I can just nibble…_ But she felt that melting, relaxing sensation that told her she would lose control in just a moment, and she pushed him away, with force. "Erik!"

"You'll never guess who we ran into in the flower shop. Simon Markham, your manager." he told her, neutrally, but breathing hard. "Funny, he doesn't seem to remember meeting me—and somehow in the last two weeks he's gone from being right-handed to being left-handed."

_Oh, no. No…_ She had been clever—too clever, and now it had come back to bite her.

"I—," she tried, but she couldn't think of anything to say, any new lie to spin.

"What a very elaborate lie it was, to be sure." He looked at her, shaking his head. "And I swallowed it."

"I didn't know you then." she whispered.

"Mama?!" Wanda's voice came from the living room.

"We'll talk about this later." Erik promised. "After dinner, once they're in their playroom."

She nodded mutely. _I am not looking forward to it_…

As good as the meal was, it might as well have been ashes in her mouth.

"We should probably go outside for this." he stated.

"All right. Around the other side of the house?"

"By all means." he said, grimly.

They rounded the corner of the house, and found themselves by the ornamental pool in the front, where the fountain played among papyrus and lotus plants; the huge white blooms glowed in the first rays of the full moon.

_This is far too nice a night for this_, she thought gloomily. "Erik, I'm sorry. Yes, I lied to you, and I wish I hadn't. Please, forgive me." _I don't want to have to kill you._ She was already thinking about how to do it; her usual modus operandi—kill him, imitate him, establish an alibi, dump the body. It had worked for her before, twice in fact.

"No more lies, then," he said. "Why did you do it?"

"Because I didn't know you. I didn't know if I could trust you—and more importantly, I didn't know if Pietro and Wanda could trust you."

That one hit home, she could see. "So you went to all that trouble—you found as near a double as you could for your manager, you prompted him, paid him—I'm assuming. In what coin did you pay him?"

"In cash." she said it as icily as she could. "I don't like what you're implying." _If I could pay in any other coin, I'd have Jane Russell's roles and publicity, and she'd have mine. Howard would probably have thrown in the house for free_.

"Fair enough; I don't like being lied to. I don't know who I'm disgusted with more—you for lying, or me for believing you. The poor tragic dying girl: a situation straight out of La Boheme. You should work on coughing up some blood if you truly want to play Mimi."

"Is this why your wife left you? Because she couldn't stand your sarcasm?" It flew out of her mouth, almost unbidden.

He looked ready to strike her_. All right, Erik, just you try it. You'll get the shock of your life._ "You will kindly not mention her. You and she are not on the same level. She never lied to me."

"No, she only committed suicide rather than deal with you and your children. I'm starting to have the greatest sympathy with her!" _Why am I saying these things? Why do I want to hit him, to hurt him? Because he got to me, that's why. He made me want_…

"She—! No. You lie again. Admit it!" He seized her shoulders and shook her.

"No lie. It's on the death certificate. She went out on the coldest night of the year deliberately. What did you do that she would rather embrace death—than embrace you?"

He let go of her so suddenly she staggered. "Magda." he said. "Magda." Looking at her, he asked, "Is that why you said you could be no more to me, because you were afraid?"

"No." Uncomfortable, she dropped her eyes. "I said it—because I can't be with anyone. Not because I have a bad heart, but for…other reasons. Believe me, if I could—well." She left it at that.

"What reasons?" he asked.

"You don't want me to lie to you again, do you? Then please don't press me for an answer. It's not something I can talk about."

"Is it medical?"

"Not…precisely. I can't talk about it."

"Am I the wrong sex?"

"The wrong---God, no! I—can't talk about it."

"Then—Robin, the things you've let drop—were you misused as a child? Molested?"

_Let him interpret this the way he wants to. Then I won't be lying to him—not directly._ "I can't talk about it. And…I have tried getting beyond it. I've tried twice, and it was a disaster each time." _Which is putting it mildly._

"Robin—I—Not all men are like that, you know. I am not, for one."

"It's not that simple. And I can't talk about it."

"Have you tried talking to someone about it? A professional, I mean. I know of a man, he lives in New York, his name is Charles Xavier. He's a friend of mine, and he's very understanding."

"I—don't know if I could. I never have talked about it. Not with anyone."

"Let me write to him—or call him. For what it's worth—I think it is something you may be able to get beyond."

"If only I could!" _And that has the ring of truth in it, if ever anything did._

"You liked it when I kissed you, I could tell. Your responses are natural—you are normal. It's just that whatever happened, whatever is wrong—."

"I can't talk about it. That's all I can say, Erik. Now—I think I'd prefer it if you left now."

"I wish it were otherwise."

"So do I." _So do I_, she thought to herself again, as she watched him leave. _So do I._


	11. Carjacking

"…And that's the whole story, Charles." This person-to-person direct call coast-to-coast was going to cost the earth, but with luck, it would be well worth it.

"Erik, are you truly trying to tell me Roberta Rowan is the mother of your children? Roberta Rowan, who was in _Sparks Fly Upward_ and _The Scarlet Witch_? The woman who was voted Best Legs in Hollywood in 1953?"

"By adoption, Charles, by adoption. I had no idea you were such a movie fan."

"I go every now and then. She's quite memorable."

"All joking aside, Pietro and Wanda have been through—what I have prayed no child of mine should ever go through. And I fear—Robin herself has suffered ill-treatment. Without going into indiscreet detail over the phone, it is the sort of problem you are most apt to help her with."

"I see…You and she are on such terms that you call her Robin."

"I have seen her every day for the last two weeks. We're on—friendly terms."

"'Friendly', you say." Xavier repeated. "Well, as your friend, if you have need of my assistance, you know where to find me."

"Thank you. Now I must be going—it'll be time to get the children soon."

"Good-bye. Whatever happens, call soon and let me know how you're making out. Oh. I apologize, I didn't mean that to come out the way it did…"

"Quite all right. Good-bye, Charles." As Erik Lensherr hung up and headed for the shower in his hotel room, across town, something terrible was taking place. Fritz Bremer was about to make a terrible mistake…

The call had come in about fifteen minutes before—Miss Rowan was going to be detained at the studio, and could Fritz pick up the children half-an-hour early?

Fritz did not recognize the voice on the other end, but that was all right. Such calls had come in before—not often, and not since Mr. Lensherr had come on the scene, but he was not a suspicious man. Had he been told to take the children to an unfamiliar location, he would certainly have asked to speak to his employer. But a request to pick them up and take them home—that was entirely conventional.

Nor was the school to blame. They were responsible people, well aware of the dangers to the children in their care Fritz was on the list of people authorized to pick up Pietro and Wanda Rowan, and so they summoned the children, and sent them off…

It was not far to the Rowan residence—in fact there were only two traffic stops. At the first stop, a man stepped up to the car and pulled open the driver's side door. Fritz was about to tell him off when he saw the gun.

"Don't hurt anyone, please." said the houseboy. He was not a young man any longer, and he knew it; yet neither was he a coward—nor yet a fool.

"Move over." commanded the thug. "I'll do the driving."

"Who's going to hurt somebody?" Pietro asked, looking up from his papers. "Who's that man?"

"Just be good, quiet little children, and you won't find out." The gunman. "See, I've got a gun, just like in the movies. You know what that means?"

Suddenly solemn, the two children nodded silently, drawing together in the back seat.

Their abductor negotiated a series of turns, quickly taking Fritz into an area with which he was not immediately familiar. Meanwhile, in the back seat, a frantic hissed conversation was going on between the children.

"Mama said never to—."

"Mama isn't here!"

"But we could get in trouble—."

"Worse trouble than this?"

"Quiet back there!" barked the man with the gun, the man who held all three of their lives hostage. A cold drip of sweat ran down Bremer's back; he knew who had value here, and who did not. He would not be held for ransom, if such was this man's intent—that would be the roles assigned to Wanda and Pietro.

If he were lucky, he would be dropped off somewhere, with instructions for Miss Rowan as to how she could get her children back.

If he were unlucky, he would serve as an example of how deadly serious the kidnapper was…

The thug pulled over on a barren side road, deserted but for one car and three men who waited around it. "Here we are," remarked their captor, throwing open the passenger's side door.

"Good," commented one of the men, reaching in and pulling Fritz out by the collar. He, too, had a gun. Reversing it in his hand, he struck Fritz across the head with it, cutting his scalp. "Tell Lensherr Hans Richter sends his regards." Wanda screamed, a high-pitched, almost hypersonic sound such as only small children can produce.

Fritz fell to his knees, clutching his torn scalp. He felt dizzy, sick—a lump was already forming under his hand, and blood leaked out between his fingers.

Another opened one of the back doors, and slid in with the twins. "Hello, children." he oozed stickily. "We're going to take a nice little ride together, and then we're going to wait for your mother and father to join us. Especially your father. Won't that be nice?"

"No." Pietro said.

"That's just too bad." he said, shutting the door. A second man slid in on Wanda's side, blocking them in.

"Do you need more help?" asked the man who had hit Fritz, wiping the hair and blood from the handle of his weapon.

"For two kids? Hardly." snorted the oozing talker. He removed a pair of scissors from his pocket. "Hold still." he ordered the twins.

Cutting a lock of hair from each of their heads, he deposited them carefully in an envelope and handed it to the bully, the only one of the gang still standing on the street.

"Thanks. In that case, I'll go get things ready for 'Mama' and 'Poppa'. See you later."

"See you." They drove away with the children while the remaining man got into his own vehicle and drove off, leaving Fritz alone and bleeding on the asphalt.

Moaning, Bremer swayed, and lost conciousness.

* * *

A/N: I do like reviews... Please feed the writer's ego!


	12. Crisis

Robin was not late in getting to the school, but Erik was there earlier. Tight-lipped and furious, his first words to her were, "They tell me Fritz picked up the children half an hour ago. Where did you have him drive them—or more to the point, where do you have them hidden?"

"What?" she asked. "I didn't send Fritz—."

He caught her wrist and held it in a way that wasn't quite painful, but threatened to become so. "Don't try that with me. I know you're capable of lying and enlisting others to help you with it. Although I don't know how you thought you could ever pull this one off!"

Her other hand shot out and seized his wrist in just the same way. "I tell you, I didn't have Fritz pick them up. And for a man who wants me to believe his late wife didn't kill herself because of him, you're very quick to resort to the physical."

"You haven't yet seen me resort to physical violence!" he hissed furiously.

"Nor have you seen me resort to violence, either!" she retorted. "_Where_ are Pietro and Wanda?"

A teacher from the school interrupted them. "Miss Rowan? A man just dropped this off for you." She held out an envelope.

Robin opened it. Inside was a folded note addressed to Mr. Lensherr—and two locks of hair, one dark red, the other silver grey, kitten-soft and baby-fine.

"Kidnapped…" she breathed.

Erik read the note aloud. "'If you want to see your children again, call this number. Do not inform the police.'" Their eyes met, hers fearful, his suspicious.

She snatched the paper from his hand and ran.

He had a car, while she was on foot, but he had to get to his vehicle and start it, so she had a slight head start—and the advantage of not having to stick to the city streets. She reached her house before he did, fumbled with the key, recovered it, unlocked the gate as he was pulling up, and slammed it behind her before he crossed the sidewalk.

Sliding the heavy metal bolts home, she whirled and called to Jorge, "Don't let him in!" Leaping the ornamental pond, she dashed into the house. "I need the phone!" she roared at Madelaina, who was talking to someone on the house phone..

"Oh, Miss Rowan, I 'm so glad it's you! It's the hospital. Someone found Mr. Fritz unconscious on an access road, and they brought him in. They don't know where the car is or where the children are."

Erik skidded to a halt behind her. "How did you—?" she began, "Never mind. I still need to use the phone, Madelaina. The children are missing!"

Her maid dropped the instrument and wailed. Jorge stumbled in, saying, "You didn't bolt the gate, Miss Rowan, I couldn't keep him out." The other phone, her private line, rang, and Madelaina scrambled to answer it.

She scooped up the phone. "But I did—. Not now!" To Erik, she spat as she dialed, "You can be suspicious of me, or you can help me get them back. Hello?"

The man on the other end replied, "I'm not dealing with you. Put Lensherr on the line."

"He won't talk to me, he wants you." She thrust the phone at him.

"Hello?" Erik asked. "Who is this?"

"Miss Rowan? You have a call on the other phone." Madelaina stuck her head out of the family wing.

"Can't it wait?" She hovered at Erik's elbow, trying to catch what the man on the other end was saying.

"No. It's the state police."

"All right…"

* * *

About twenty minutes earlier….

The kidnappers sped away in Robin's car, the children sandwiched between two men.

As frightened as Wanda and Pietro were, during their lives they had already seen so much of the ugliest aspects of human behavior that their captors' casual brutality was only to be expected. The life they lived with Robin was no more than a soap bubble or a dream, beautiful, wonderful, and as likely to vanish in an eye-blink

They were also their father's children—and, even though they had come to her through adoption, their mother's.

"Sprags Zay Latverian?" Pietro asked. While the man who struck Fritz had sounded German, these men did not.

"What the hell was that?" asked the man on Wanda's side.

"How should I know?" asked the man beside Pietro, the oozing talker with the scissors.

"They don't speak it, Pietro." Wanda said, in Latverian.

"Good." Pietro continued in their first language. "You have to do it. Mama's not here, and if you don't, then we're going off with strangers, and we're not supposed to do that either. And they have guns."

"But she'll be angry if I magic things in front of people."

"She'll be gladder to see us than mad about that." Pietro predicted. "Anyway, being in trouble with Mama is different than this kind of trouble. And that other man is going after Mama and Poppa both."

"Can't you shut them up?" asked the driver.

"Oh, let them prattle. They aren't doing any harm," replied the oozer. They were hurtling rapidly up a coastal road, one with a lot of hair pin turns, on a steep slope over a long drop to the ocean below.

"Do it, Wanda!"

"But—."

"Do it!"

Wanda hexed the engine, which exploded and sent the car out of control. It crashed through one guard rail, which only slowed it down, and suffered a five-foot drop to the lower portion of the current loop.

The driver's head snapped back and forward again, smashing against the steering wheel. The windshield cracked and crazed like a spider's web, and the four in the back jolted severely. Still moving, the car crashed into the second guard rail, and stopped—with one wheel hanging out over thin air, over a drop of several hundred feet to the rocky shore below.

The two abductors in the backseat cursed. Wanda's guard reached forward and shook the driver's shoulder. "Cullen?" Traveling further, his hand found wet warmth. "Blood—he's concussed or he's dead. Shit!"

"This car isn't balanced well." said the oozer. "My side is half-off the cliff. Open up your door, and get out real slow—but wait until I'm over the half-way point. Move carefully, now."

"All right…" First the thug got out, dragging Wanda along behind him carefully.

"Now you, kid." said the man who spoke with such syrupy tones. The boy slid over, and the man followed him—but then Pietro kicked him in the chest, as rapidly as only he could, with the considerable strength of his hyper-fast leg muscles.

His kidnapper fell backward, as Pietro scrabbled to get out of the unbalanced car. It swayed, teetered—and fell from the cliff. The boy watched as it smashed on the rocks below.

"F---!" said the remaining man. His voice shook as he unholstered his weapon. "Shit. Kids, you get just where I can see you. You do it now."

"Wanda, you _have_ to magic him. Then we'll be safe!"

The last man alive looked at the little girl who he had helped to steal. She was a pretty child in a dainty white blouse, her red hair curling on her shoulders. In her huge eyes was more pain than he had ever seen on the face of a child.

"I'm sorry." she said. "I wish I didn't have to do this." She made a gesture, and his heart exploded in his chest.

* * *

"Who is this?" Erik asked.

"A recent acquaintance." replied the man on the other end. His voice was dimly familiar. "Listen well. This is what I want you to do. You and the lovely Miss Rowan…"

Erik took up the pencil and pad by the telephone and started making notes.

"Wait!" Robin burst back into the living room, her face alight with relief. "They're all right. The state police found them on Route 30. The kidnappers had an accident. They're all right!"

Erik covered the mouthpiece. "Are you sure?"

"They let me speak to both of them. Wanda and Pietro. It was them. They're all right!"

Erik went back to his phone call. "Is it possible you may be misinformed?" he asked the man.

"What do you mean?" Whoever he was, he had a heavy German accent.

"Miss Rowan tells me the state police have the children safe. The kidnappers were in an accident on Route 30, apparently."

"Scheiss!" cursed the other man, softly. Then he hung up.


	13. Magicked

As they headed for his car, Erik asked, "Are the kidnappers in custody?"

"No," Robin replied.

"No?"

Perhaps she didn't like his tone of voice, because she shot him a furious look. "They're in the morgue. At least the one who died of a heart attack is. They told me they'll have to wait for low tide before the bodies of the other two can be recovered."

"What happened?"

"The driver lost control of the car, which went through two guard rails and wound up balanced on the edge of a cliff. One of the kidnappers got out, along with Pietro and Wanda, before it went over the edge, and then he keeled over from the shock. There was a state trooper nearby in his car. He saw everything, and he was on the scene within five minutes."

He opened the passenger's door for her, and she slid in. Once he was seated, before he put the key in the ignition, he said, "Robin—the man on the phone. I recognized his voice. I don't recall precisely where I know him from, but I know now that you could not and did not have anything to do with this. I'm sorry. Please forgive me for suspecting you."

She drew her hand back and slapped him hard enough that his teeth cut into the inside of his cheek, drawing blood. "Just drive," she growled.

_I already knew she was a woman of strong character,_ he reflected, as he put the car in gear. _Evidently she is strong in every other way as well. When she snatched that note from my hand and ran with it, she could have rivaled an Olympic runner._

After three or four miles spent driving in silence, he glanced over at her. She wore a rosy-coral twin set with a strand of pearls, and she looked ladylike and polished and remote as the moon. The color flattered her skin and her hair.

"I've fallen in love with you." he told her.

She glanced his way, which was better than nothing.

"I loved Magda. When she left me, when our elder daughter died—it was three deaths in one—I lost Anya, I lost Magda, and our marriage died as well. I mourned their loss for five years and more. When I learned that Magda was dead, it was, in its way, a relief—because it meant I could finally put away that abiding grief. Before that, her very absence was a kind of presence. It affected every aspect of my life. Until I met you, and came to love you, she was the only woman I had ever loved."

"You're going to have to turn off at the next exit," was her only response.

"And it is you that I love—Robin, I mean. Not Roberta Rowan, the movie star. I realized it yesterday, in the flower shop. It was that trip to the mountains that did it, seeing you away from Hollywood, away from the rest of the world, when you were simply yourself—."

"You haven't seen me be myself yet. Not completely…" Her voice was as bitter as myrrh. "I liked you very much—up until yesterday."

_If I can't get her to New York, I will do anything to get Charles to fly out here. I will plead and grovel,_ he vowed silently. _Whatever is troubling her—if she cannot overcome it, it will destroy her._

They made the rest of the drive in utter silence.

Like a flock of vultures, a small crowd of photographers and reporters clogged their way to the door of the state police barracks. "Miss Rowan! Miss Rowan!"

Ducking through, they made their way inside. "The children?" Robin practically flung herself at the officer behind the desk.

"They're with the barracks nurse, right this way, Miss Rowan. Wow, I never thought I'd get to meet you in person—"

There they were, Pietro and Wanda, in the company of a starchy, lumpish woman. He was dusty and disheveled, while she was tear-stained and puffy-faced, but they were alive and unharmed.

"Mama!" "Mama!" They threw themselves into her arms, and all three started crying.

He was feeling a bit misty-eyed himself, and was about to kneel down with them when the nurse cleared her throat. "Mr. Rowan?"

"I'm not—well, close enough."

"Hmph." The woman sniffed. "I wanted to talk to you about the children's reaction. Now, your son took it like a little man, but the girl—Some degree of trauma is only to be expected, but I can only describe her response as hysterical. I would diagnose her as neurotic, overly imaginative, even morbid. She insists she was responsible for the accident—and for the death of the man who had a heart attack. She says she 'magicked' both the car and the man."

"For this reason, you're labeling my daughter as neurotic and morbid?"

"Why—yes."

"Do you work with children a great deal? Are you a psychiatric professional?"

"No, but—."

"Then allow me to inform you that your mind is narrow and full of trash. Those children were born in a war zone. They spent four years of their lives being shuffled from one orphanage to another, enduring conditions which you, you rump-fed, rump-faced harpy, could not possibly imagine. And you label her neurotic because she wants to imagine she has some control over events? Bah!"

He became aware that Pietro, Wanda and Robin were all staring at him, as well as the nurse, who seemed to be feigning heart palpitations.

"Poppa!" Pietro sounded awed.

"I didn't like her either." Wanda added. "Can we go now?"

It was not that simple. There were investigators who wanted to hear all about the kidnapping, first from Erik and Robin, then from Pietro and Wanda. Erik, who thanks to his past, was preternaturally attuned to the slightest hint of suspicion from officials, detected nothing which made him wary—especially once the officers started asking Robin for autographs and asking if they could have their pictures taken with her.

Robin accepted their requests with smiles and every appearance of delight, but he could see the faint signs of stress under the mask of 'Roberta Rowan'. And she thinks I've never seen her as she truly is…

Eventually, however, they were allowed to leave.

"I want to sit up front with Mama!"

"No, me! Mememe!"

"What if I were to sit in back with the two of you, in the middle, so you can share me?" That proved acceptable, and they drove off.

Now and then, Erik glanced in the rearview mirror at… his family. _Yes. They are my family—all of us together_. Wanda and Pietro were cuddled up against Robin, clinging to her as if she would melt away if they let go, and she had an arm around each child, like a mother bird with her hatchlings.

_Anya—was so precious to me. She embodied my belief in the future. That died with her. Now that I know the world is the same dangerous, cold place it has always been, full of evils…what do these three embody for me?_

_That there are surprises. Two children I did not know I had, a woman who had the heart to rescue them and love them…who would have thought it? Amid all the horrors in this world, in Pandora's box there remains— hope. _

_What miracle kept them alive, when their captors died? Wanda said she 'magicked'—no, that isn't strictly true. The nurse said she said it. When she was questioned by the police, Wanda said nothing about that at all. _

His musing was derailed when Pietro raised his head and volunteered, "I'm hungry."

"Me, too." Wanda seconded.

Erik looked to Robin. She raised a hand to her head. "I'd rather not go in anywhere—you saw what happened back at the police barracks. The last thing I want is to be signing autographs all night."

"There are hamburger stands along the way." Erik pointed out. "You could wait while we went in—if you don't mind the limited menu or eating in the car, that is."

"Hamburgers!" gasped Pietro.

"Oh, please, Mama! Please, please, please!" Wanda started bouncing up and down.

"I can see where the majority vote is." Robin smiled. "All right—as long as we park out of the way."

"There's a place up ahead." Erik changed lanes. "What flavor milkshake would you like?"

"Chocolate, please."

Two paper sacks full of food later, they were back in the car. "These are surprisingly good. Not too greasy." Robin observed, as she dipped some fries in ketchup. What was that place called?"

"McDonald's." Erik looked at the bag.

"Oh, yes. They have a place in San Bernardino, too. We'll have to remember them, and come back some time." Robin sipped her milkshake. "As good as these are, I'm sure they'll catch on."

"Mama?" Wanda piped up. "I'm sorry your car got all smashed up."

"Sweetheart, I don't care about the car. I'm just glad you didn't get smashed up with it." Robin hugged her daughter.

"But I magicked it. I m-m-magicked that man, too." Her lower lip began to quiver. "I didn't mean to kill him. I just wanted to be safe!"

"Wanda, don't—.We can talk about this when we get home. You know it's one thing to talk about magic when we're alone, and another when we're around people who—who just wouldn't understand, like that mean nurse. Just know that whatever happened, I'm so glad that my wonderful, beautiful daughter is all right that I couldn't be mad at her for anything in the world."

Robin wiped tears away from Wanda's eyes with a paper napkin. "Uh-oh. I didn't realize there was a blob of ketchup on this. Now it's streaked across your nose. You should see yourself!" Wanda giggled, even through her tears.

Curious, Erik asked, "Wanda, how do you mean you magicked the car? Did you say abracadabra to it?"

"No, Poppa. I just went like this—." She gestured out the open window.

Robin's, "Wanda, don't!" came too late. The telephone pole a few dozen yards away broke in half and toppled slowly backward.

_She did that. Wanda did that. _His glance at Robin caught her with an absolutely horrified expression on her face. _And Robin knows she did it. That's why she's been reading up about mutants. Wanda, my Wanda, my daughter, is a mutant._ He looked at Pietro, who looked disgusted. _He knows, too. I wonder if he could be a mutant as well…_

He took pity on Robin and said, "What an odd coincidence."

"Y-yes, isn't it?" she replied, weakly. "Should we report it to someone?"

He gestured to the parking lot of the McDonald's, where several people were pointing to the broken pole. "I believe that is being taken care of. Everybody ready?"

"Uh-huh." "Yes, I am." "Let's go home!" He started the car.

_Robin knows Wanda is a mutant, and she doesn't care. She loves her anyway_. The thought made him very happy.


	14. The Unmasking

They made two stops along the way: once for a bathroom break, and the second time at Santa Monica General Hospital, so that Robin could check on Fritz. He was still unconscious, but it was her concern which would matter to him when he woke. She left him a note telling him she was there and that the children were safe.

So it was a bit past the twins' bedtime when they finally returned to Robin's house by the sea, and both children had dozed off. Erik carried Wanda in, while Robin managed Pietro as if he were a sack of potatoes. Madelaina woke them up with her cries of relief and joy at finding them safe and well, and before long the sleepy pair had been poked and prodded out of their clothes, washed up, and put to bed. Erik rendered what assistance he could, but when it became clear he was more in the way than he was a help, he stood back and watched the two women work.

Robin, of course, was the focus of his attention. How different she could be, from one moment to the next—the cold fury she had shown him earlier, the tenderness with which she untied shoelaces and brushed the tangles out of Wanda's hair—the passionate hunger with which she had returned his kiss the night before. Her mouth had tasted of strawberries.

_Life with her will never be boring,_ he thought. _Never. I'm sure there are a lot of other adjectives and adverbs which will describe it, but boring and its synonyms won't be among them. _

Her work done, Madelaina bid them good night, and crossed the large all-in-one room with its walls of glass to the other wing of the house, leaving Erik and Robin alone in the living room.

"Would you like a cup of coffee before you go?" Robin offered.

"Yes, very much." He wandered around the living room while she started the beverage brewing—picking a medical journal from the shelf, he was amused to find an article in it by Charles—on mutants, of course. He replaced it, and joined her.

"I do like this house." He commented, as she assembled cups and saucers for them. "It's right in the thick of things, yet it's private. I don't believe there's any way for someone to see in. The view is spectacular, the setting couldn't be better, and the architecture, though unconventional, seems very livable."

"You're right. For someone to watch us right now, they'd have to be out in a boat with a pair of high powered binoculars, and even then, they wouldn't find it easy. Do you take cream or sugar?"

"One sugar, that's all. Thank you." They sat in the dining room.

"Well—." She said, and let it hang.

"Well," he agreed, and went on. "Now I know why you've been reading up on mutants. Wanda magics things. What does Pietro do?" He kept his voice neutral.

Her cup clattered on its saucer as she set it down. "Oh—I—He runs faster than the eye can follow." She swallowed hard. "I—I've known for months. Since before I brought them home. I didn't know they were mutants, I never heard of mutants until I read about them in _Photoplay_ magazine, the same issue we were in. I just knew they were different. How much do you know about mutants?"

"Rather more than you do, I suspect." No one could have told from his voice whether he approved or disapproved.

"Most of what's out there on mutants is—well, it's wrong. It makes them out to be monsters, something to fear. Evil…And they aren't. I know what Wanda can do is—well, it's something to be concerned about, but, but… Don't reject them because of it. Please. They're still children—your children."

The stainless steel coffeepot sat on the counter. "Robin—my dearest Robin," he said, calling it some ten feet through the air to his hand, "Where do you think they get it from?"

"Oh!—You. You're—."

"Yes. I am. And you're correct. Most of what's out there on mutants is wrong. You have nothing to fear." He reached out and took her hand. "We aren't evil, and we aren't monsters. Yours is a rare and loving heart, and I honor you for it. Not many people can see the truth beyond the hysteria of the popular press, and judge by what they themselves know."

She took a deep breath. He could both see and feel that she was trembling violently. "Robin, what's wrong?"

"You're always crediting me with nobler motives than I really have. You see…I'm a mutant, too."

As she said the words, she changed. A wave of vivid blue swept up her throat and over her face, her features altering with it. He still held her hand; the very skin texture changed as she did, becoming more supple, more like silk or suede. Her eyes flashed at him when she blinked, richly yellow, without whites or irises. Only her hair remained the same.

"Dear God…" he breathed.

"I can imitate anyone I choose, male or female." Her face altered again, and her manager sat there—in her twin set and pearls, an incongruous touch. "I can become taller or shorter," she said, in Simon Markham's voice.

"I can seem fatter or thinner, younger—" She became Pietro. "Or older." There was Fritz Bremer.

"I hardly know who I really am." The Robin he knew sat there once more.

"But I always wake up looking like this, so I suppose this must be the real me." The blue washed over her once, her eyes brightening and warming until they were the same glowing yellow as before.

If anything, she was even more beautiful in her natural state than she was as Roberta Rowan. It wasn't only her coloring, although her cobalt skin had a faint iridescent shimmer to it, like the wings of a tropical butterfly, and her eyes were living flame. No, it was her bone structure, which was entirely different. This was the face of the girl who wasn't squeamish about things that lived under rocks and didn't mind splashing around in a creek.

He knew he was staring, but he couldn't stop.

"I have another confession to make. I—I'm sorry I let you think I was sexually abused, because I wasn't," she said, her voice growing thick with tears. "This is what I couldn't talk about. This is why I c-can't be with anybody. I revert every night when I sleep—and when I'm awake, I have to keep control over it, like—like sucking in your stomach. If we'd kept on kissing, you'd have closed your eyes to kiss Roberta Rowan—and opened them to find you were kissing—this." Her other hand fluttered up to indicate her face.

"That would be disconcerting, if one wasn't expecting it." he began.

"Disconcerting? Men scream and try to run when—But that's only happened twice. I should have known better after the first time." She laughed, a hint of hysteria in her voice.

"Well, as lies go, there is nothing here for me to forgive. I know only too well how most people—even one's nearest and dearest—are apt to react to the revelation that one is a mutant. That was why Magda left me—it was the night our daughter died. My powers, until then, had been latent. I only knew metallic objects sometimes moved when I was frightened or angry—but that night, I killed more than a dozen people."

"More than a dozen? You have me beat." There was more than a hint of hysteria when she laughed this time. "I've only killed two."

It was not hard to make the connection. "The men who screamed and tried to run?"

She nodded. "I'm a black widow spider—the first time it wasn't on purpose. The second time—he started hitting me, he grabbed a poker—."

"That's terrible!"

"Yes. I am." Her mouth twisted sadly. "So tell me—am I too freakish even for the mutant world? There can't be many like me out there."

"Don't talk like that about yourself! Don't even think of yourself that way! You are what and who you are supposed to be, and you are—I have seen your kind before. On pyramid walls; in illustrations of tales and legends. The most beautiful of the gods and goddesses have skin like yours, because it is the color of heaven." He stood without releasing her hand, and drew her to her feet.

Now she was weeping; crystal drops stood out against the blue, and left silver traces in the light. "You don't—you can't mean that!"

"Can't I?" In her natural form, she was even taller than as 'Roberta Rowan', which only made it easier for him to kiss her. Her lips were velvety. For a moment she seemed too shocked to respond, but then—she was quivering, holding on to him as though she would fall otherwise, and kissing him as if she could draw oxygen only from his lips. Her tears continued to flow, making it a salty and wet kiss, but the sweeter for it.

When they finished, breathlessly, he smiled into her incredulous face. "Now, let me tell you—Better yet, let me _demonstrate_—." He picked her up, and headed for the family wing.

* * *

A/N: So, did I do a good job? Gotta warn you, next chapter might get somewhat explicit… 


	15. The Color of Heaven

A/N: Okay, last chance to avoid somewhat explicit--but not too explicit--material. You can skip it without missing any plot, and pick up again next chapter

* * *

He had kissed her. 

He saw her as she truly was, and yet Erik had kissed her full on the mouth, just as she was, and the things he had said... _Perhaps he meant it, when he said he loved me._

_Please let him have meant it… _She slid her arm around his neck for balance.

"I always wanted to do this," he confided cheerfully as he carried her up the stairs. "Carrying a beautiful woman off to make love to her isn't something that happens in the normal course of my day. Or ever before, actually."

"Are you sure you can manage? I'm not the lightest creature in the world." She was built very solidly—she had to be, since so much of her powers focused on muscle control.

"If you weighed ten times as much I could still carry you just as easily. A strong magnetic current passed through almost anything will levitate it."

"I didn't know that. It's the door at the end of the hall."

"Thank you." He carried Robin across the threshold of her bedroom as if she were a bride, and paused. "This is quite a room!"

"It is, isn't it?" Three of the four walls were exterior walls, with windows. The side walls, painted in swirls of dark blues and greens touched with silver, were solid up to above her head for privacy, while the far wall offered an uninterrupted view of the ocean framed by silver silk draperies. In place of a headboard above the platform bed there hung an antique Japanese screen in silver leaf and lacquer, a landscape of autumn grasses bent by the wind; on the wall opposite hung the matching screen depicting a spring meadow. The bed itself was covered in pearl-toned satin with dark blues and pale pinks here and there for contrast; a pillow here, the bed skirts, with a sumptuous sable throw over its foot.

Crossing the distance to the bed with rapid strides, he placed her down on it while the door closed and locked all by itself. _So that's how he got past a closed and bolted gate,_ she thought, propping herself up on her elbows to watch him shed jacket, tie and shirt with an eager haste. _Oh, he doesn't disappoint…_His torso was lean and well-toned, his arms solid with muscle. He was beautiful in a wholly masculine way.

"The light switch—," she began.

"I don't want the lights off. I want them on. All of them. I want to see you."

That sent an anticipatory tingle through her to pool at her center. "No, but if you wouldn't mind closing the drapes…?"

"Not at all. Let there be no witnesses, not even the moon—By the way, is there any chance the children might hear us?"

"No. There's a dressing room on one side and a bathroom on the other."

"Better yet." He joined her on the bed, naked from the waist up now, slid his arms around her, and kissed her again.

_Yes_… She wrapped her arms around him, drawing him down, and yes, he was warm and real under her hands. When they paused, she asked him, still half-disbelieving, "How _can_ you find me attractive as I am?"

"It helps that we're the same species—both of us mutants." He laughed, helping her take off her cardigan. "I'm sure a male warthog wouldn't find a female gazelle appealing, but a male gazelle would and should go wild over her…"

He kissed her again, one hand sliding under her top and traveling upward. When he made a certain discovery, he broke the kiss to observe, "You are not wearing a bra!"

"They're very uncomfortable, and I don't really need them." she explained.

"I'll say you don't—May I take this off you? If I'm going too fast, or if I start doing something you don't like—."

"I'll let you know," she finished for him. She wriggled free from her top, and waited nervously for his reaction.

"Ohhh—." was all he said, before he kissed her again, and began working his way down her neck, nibbling and licking his way along. Pausing, he raised his head and smiled wickedly at her. "The question is—are these blueberry or blackberry flavored?"

She clutched the back of his head as he toyed and teased with lips and tongue, running her hands through his hair. Her heart sped up, her breath came in ragged gasps, and she felt every sensation travel through her body to melt her into pliancy. He raised his head, saying, "I can't decide, but I like—Am I hurting you!?"

"N-no. Why?"

"You're crying. Usually a man takes that as a sign he's doing something wrong."

"Am I?" She touched her face. "I don't think I can help it. I'm so happy—."

"In that case, if you're sure—." He went back to what he was doing. With consideration and care he coaxed her body to respond and then to conclude as it was meant to, although she could tell from the tension in him, and the way his body strained against hers, that he was ready and more than ready to find his own release.

When it was over, and they were holding each other, he kissed her forehead up by the hairline, and said, "Thank you. It's been a very long time since—well."

"You're thanking me?" She laughed, and raised herself up so she could look at him. "I didn't say it before—but I love you."

Erik smiled and raised a hand to trace her lips with one finger; she bit his thumb gently, which made him laugh. "Robin—I take it your name isn't really Roberta Rowan."

"It isn't Robin, either. It used to be Raven—Raven Darkholme."

"I don't think either suits you. Both robins and ravens are far too common for you to be called either one. Although 'Raven' is the better of the two. What is it now?"

"I'm not sure."

"Then I will have to call you my heart until you find another. What I want to know is, although the movie going public may not be ready for a star with golden eyes and blue skin rather than the other way around, why did you bother to create a false face for yourself—when your own is so beautiful."

"You're going to have me crying again. I didn't want anyone—I mean my family—to recognize me. I wasn't born with blue skin."

She turned away—he pulled her close again. "When did you change?"

"It started when I was eleven. I got a bad sunburn at the lake one day, and when it peeled, underneath my skin was like this. It was patchy at first—in fact it took three years to spread over my whole body.

"My parents took me to the doctor—to a lot of doctors and dermatologists. They tried what they knew to do—creams, lotions, injections. They tried to burn it off with heat and with acid, they tried to freeze it with dry ice, they zapped me with electricity. Most of the treatments hurt, and nothing helped. As it spread, I wore more and more clothing. I was afraid to go to school, for fear someone would find out. My parents—They talked about my skin condition as if it were leprosy—until it took over my face. One day I woke up with yellow eyes and red hair. Then they looked at me like I was the disease."

"Robin—I mean Raven—, I'm so sorry—."

"It gets worse. First they locked me up, for months—and then they put rat poison in my food. I nearly died. I thought I was going to die."

"They did _that_ to you? Oh, they had best pray they never cross my path, or I will—but that's not fit conversation. You lived; you escaped."

"Yes. Once I stopped vomiting blood, I started realizing I could change certain things about my body. And that I could hold my breath for more than two minutes. I made it look as though I hanged myself—when they thought for sure I was dead, they left the door unlocked."

"Very resourceful of you!"

"Thank you. I'm just going to go use the bathroom now—I'll be right back." She slipped out of bed and into her robe. Being naked in her true form around someone else was something she was going to have to get used to.

She was on her way back when she heard the voices. Erik's voice—and those of at least two men she did not know.


	16. Danger, Danger, Danger

Erik folded his arms behind his head, and gazed up at the ceiling, which was also silvery. Clearly the decorator had been out to create the effect of a mermaid's ocean bower, and the result was a surprisingly appropriate setting for a rather more exotic leading lady than he or she had known. He was in that pleasantly drowsy state known as afterglow, and enjoying it thoroughly. _Raven…It doesn't capture her mystique, but then, what would_?

A sudden sound jolted him out of his reverie and burned off all traces of his post-orgasmic haze—the sound of the lock on Raven's bedroom door turning—.

_That is **not** either of the children_. He sat bold upright as the door opened, and five men walked in—the agent to whom he reported, a man he thought of as 'Richelieu', three strangers, one a very large man—and Hans Richter. Now he knew to whom the voice on the other end of the phone belonged.

"Hello, Magneto." Richelieu greeted him, pleasantly. He took a drag on a cigarette and let the smoke out in a long stream.

_No—oh, those hypocrites._ The sense of betrayal he felt was quickly overwhelmed by his anger. "So that's how it is," he hissed, wrapping the sheet around his waist. _What a malicious sense of timing they have. Literally caught with my pants down._

"For someone who's lived through what you have, you can be remarkably naïve." Richelieu dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it into the floor with his foot. "You should have stuck with the agenda we gave you. You see, there are Nazis, and then there are Nazis. The ones who work for our Commie friends—you could have gone on catching them for the next twenty years, and we'd have clapped you on the back and cut you a check. But the ones who work for us, like our friend Richter here—that's another story."

"Perhaps you should pick your friends more carefully—to judge by how he handled the kidnapping of my children."

"Oh, he screwed up there big time! Didn't you, Hans?"

"I am not accustomed to being spoken to in that manner." Richter's voice was clipped. "No one informed me that there was anything unusual about his vile whelps."

"And I suppose a lot of five-year-old boys have silver hair in Germany." Richelieu sneered. "If it were up to me, Magneto, I'd just as soon keep you on the payroll. You have your uses, mutie. Perhaps your children might have had their uses, too—but that's all over now. They—and your girlfriend—are going to be sacrificed to appease Richter here, and his friends. So are you, of course—but they're going to go first. And in case you're thinking of ringing for the maid—don't bother. She won't answer, but it's hard to, when your throat's been cut."

"I'm amazed at the depth of your folly in coming here, with so much metal about your persons, when you know what I can do!" Erik lashed out at them with his powers only to be knocked back against the wall. A split-second later, a backwash of pain rolled through his head, a blinding, incapacitating agony.

Richelieu chuckled. "As if I didn't know by now what you can do. This," He opened his jacket to reveal a complicated vest of thread-fine wires and glittering crystals. "is something I had the lads in the laboratory whip up. It will reflect anything you throw at us right back at you. So go ahead—do your worst. It'll make our jobs easier."

"Shall I get the children now?" asked one of his henchmen, unemotionally.

"Wait until we have the lovely Miss Rowan secure first. The brats will be easier to handle when we have both their mama and their poppa under our control. Speaking of whom, it seems to me she's been in that bathroom long enough…Get her."

"No!" Erik, desperate, lashed out again, unwisely. The pain was even worse this time. He was sprawling on the bedroom floor, with no memory of having fallen, the sheets binding his legs up. Through blurring eyes, he saw spots of red appear and spread on the oyster satin—putting a hand to his face, he discovered why. His nose was bleeding, and he knew what that meant.

_My capillaries are bursting under the strain—once more, and it will be a blood vessel in my brain. If I am lucky it will kill me…_ He raised his head to see one of the men open the bathroom door and go in.

"Holy--!"screamed the man in the bathroom. "What the f--- is that!" Despite the pain, Erik grimaced in appreciation. _That's my girl…_

A crash followed, then a thud, followed by more screaming— and not feminine screaming, either. Then the thug flew back through the door, landing like an unstrung puppet. Raven stepped out, a blue blur in his vision. "People who don't knock before entering a bathroom deserve whatever they get," she declared fastidiously. Then she tore into them.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, knowing what would happen, knowing it would be tragic. Raven was fast, and she was agile and strong, but as the pain receded and his vision cleared, he could see that she had no training in how to fight, and this was four against one. She was going to lose—and when she did, the four remaining men would take their turns punishing her for it. _If we live through this, once we're all safe, the first thing to do will be to get her lessons…_

He pushed himself to his feet by getting his back against the wall, in time to see Richter take a weighted sap from his pocket—a lead disk sewn into a leather pocket with a handle—and strike Raven across the jaw with it. She went down.

_No—._ Richelieu knelt by her head, lifting it by her hair. "So. Four muties all together, what a cozy little nuclear family. I'm guessing this is Miss Rowan, even though she's unrecognizable—the hair is the same. Not so lovely now, is she?" He reached inside his jacket, came out with a gun, and aimed it at Raven's temple . "Unless one of you fancies a piece of blue ass? No?"

_No!_ As Richelieu pulled the trigger, Erik rallied, and struck out with all the power at his command. As he passed out from the pain, one victorious note rang out amid a symphony of suffering—he saw the bullet go wide of its target, and Richelieu himself go flying to crash against the far wall and land in a heap.

_Blood has iron in it. There is blood somewhere I don't want it— leaking out in my brain. All I have to do is move the iron somewhere else, and then—then I won't die…I don't want to die. I want to stay **here**, with Pietro and Wanda and Raven—especially Raven…_

He wasn't sure if he had succeeded when he came around again. He blinked. It was raining, a warm rain with soft, fat drops, falling out of a clear sky that was the dark blue of October… No, that was Raven's sculpted throat he was looking at. He was lying with his head in her lap and she was crying, the tears running down her face only to fall on his.

"Raven?" he asked. His headache was gone, and his vision was clearing.

"E-Erik?" she hiccupped. "Are you—are you going to live?"

"I believe so. What about Richter and the others?"

"Oh, they're dead. Very dead." She gestured, and he turned his head to see a lumpy pile of bloodstained sheets, presumably covering their bodies. "You know, just once I'd like to have sex and not have to kill anybody afterwards." Her voice was up in the hysterical range.

"Just once?" He decided to try sitting up, and more blood gushed from his nose.

"Oh—here!" She handed him a cold compress, already stained with gore. "I've been wiping it away for the last half hour, waiting for you to die."

"I decided not to. I hope that's all right…I had to put the blood somewhere other than in my skull with my brain, and my nose was the closest outlet."

"I was so afraid…" She turned and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her robe.

"You were magnificent! When you ejected that fellow from the bathroom, he must have flown a good six feet. What you need, my heart, is martial arts training. You're a natural."

She laughed at that. "You don't think it's unfeminine to pound people into jelly?"

"How can it be unfeminine? You're female—Pietro and Wanda. Are they all right?"

"Yes, they're fine. At least physically. They came knocking on the door, and I sent them back to bed. I don't know about Madelaina…"

"From what Richelieu said—I'm sorry, Raven. She is most probably dead."

"Ohhh. Poor Madelaina." She exhaled sadly. "Erik, what do we do? There are five dead men in here, and for all I know they may have confederates nearby."

"Very likely they do. They worked for a very large organization—the federal government. All four of us are still in danger, but I have a way to get us out of it—at least out of immediate danger. Here's what we're going to do…"


	17. Fasten Your Seatbelts

A/N: Believe it or not, this is the next to the last chapter of Talkin' Bout the Blue Angel—at least until I get inspired again. As you may recall, I left Madelaina's fate up in the air in the last chapter—was 'Richelieu' lying or telling the truth?

A lot rides on that—if she is dead, the situation is a lot grimmer than if she is alive. The Lensherrs will have to disappear off the face of the earth, leaving behind a great unsolved mystery of Hollywood: What happened to Roberta Rowan and her children?

If she is alive, then Erik, Raven, Wanda and Pietro will be able to return to the house by the ocean, Raven will be able to return to acting, Erik will have to learn how to handle being the husband of a movie star, and Wanda and Pietro won't have their lives disrupted yet again. I've been turning this one over and over all weekend, and I still can't make up my mind. If you have a strong opinion, please weigh in.

* * *

"First," Erik began, "this trash has to be disposed of. The poolside furniture is steel; I shall use it to take the bodies out to sea, well beyond the point where they are likely to drift back ashore, and dump them there. Nature will take over from there." 

"What about Madelaina? If she is dead, she can't be disposed of like that—I would never forgive myself. She's been loyal to me and helpful beyond just being my maid. She deserves better than to be thrown away, without even a grave or a prayer said over her—and her family shouldn't be left to wonder what happened to her."

"You feel that strongly about it, then?"

"I do."

"How loyal do you think she would be if she saw you as you are now—not bloodstained, I mean, but—."

"Blue? I know how she would react—but the last six months with Pietro and Wanda weren't easy, and without her, they would have been a lot worse."

"If it means that much to you—do you want to go and see, or shall I?"

"I'll go."

"While you do that, I'll get them outside."

Changing back into Roberta Rowan, Raven made her way downstairs and across to the other side of the all-in-one room, where the servant's quarters were located. The radio was blaring out a commercial for Kremel Hair Tonic when she entered the staff sitting room to find—nothing. A chair had been overturned, and she righted it, looking behind the couch and in Madelaina's room.

Still nothing—no other sign of a struggle, not even any blood. The bathroom, too, was empty. Reasoning that anything might have happened, she went through Fritz's room, then the guest rooms and the pool house area. None of the closets had a body in them, either.

"Erik!" She stepped outside.

He was busy making the poolside furniture into a mass coffin of sorts. "What's wrong?"

"I can't find her anywhere. She wasn't out here or in the pool, was she?"

"No. You went all over the house?"

"I went all over this side. She couldn't have been in the all-in-one, there's nowhere to hide a body in there. There wouldn't be room up the chimney, I know that."

"I'll look over the grounds before I fly out with this—package. In the meantime, I'm afraid I'm going to give you a rather difficult task, which is to get the children and yourself ready to spend at least a week on the road."

"All right." she agreed. "Where are we going?"

"New York. You will recall I have a friend there—Charles Xavier. He, too, is a mutant. His powers will be essential if we are to get out of this. He's a telepath. With his aid, we can trace the command for our deaths back to its source, and eliminate it—one way or another."

She went upstairs again, and threw together such clothes as she would need. When she was closing the suitcase, Erik knocked on the window. "There's no sign of her. I fixed the damage to the locks and the gates. It's possible she left the property of her own accord, either for reasons unrelated to this or because she seized the opportunity to escape."

"That's very strange…There's no time to worry about it now, I suppose. Do you think there are people watching the house?"

"There are two men leaning on a car out on the boulevard who look like they could be backup. Don't let yourself or the children be seen."

"I won't." she promised.

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

Changing back into her true form, she first searched the family wing for Madelaina, dead or alive. Finding nothing, Raven went to wake Wanda and Pietro. Neither twin was in bed—or even in their rooms. Before she assumed the worst—that they, like Madelaina were gone—she took several deep, calming breaths, and checked their bathroom.

Sure enough, there they were, crammed in under the sink. "That bad, huh?" she asked, kneeling down.

"Mama!" Wanda threw herself into Raven's arms.

"Yes, love. It's better now."

"That man came back for you and Poppa, didn't he?" Pietro asked.

"Yes." There was no sense in lying to him. "But your father and I took care of it." She said it in her firmest 'Don't ask Mama questions' voice.

"Mama, you've got your blue face on. Does Poppa know you turn blue?" Wanda asked curiously.

"Yes, he does—now. Pietro, you come out from there. We've got to get ready for a drive. It turns out your father knows a lot more about magic than I do, and he has magic of his own. All four of us are going to get in his car and go on a trip together, so we need to pack you some clothes."

"Mama—you have blood on your robe." Wanda pointed as she stood. The little girl's face screwed up, and it was clear she was on the verge of crying. "Mama!"

"It's all right—it's nothing to be worried about. Your father had a bad nosebleed, and when I helped him stop it, some of it got on me. Now hop to it."

She knew she would never forget the half hour she spent cradling Erik's head, wiping away the sluggish flow, hoping that it would stop—yet fearing that when it did, it would be because he was dead. She had thought to herself_, Pietro was right. Nothing good ever lasts for long. I find love and lose it within the same hour._

But he hadn't died, and however uncertain the future might be, at least there was a future.Bundling up their pillows and a couple of blankets, she tucked them under her arm. "Make sure you pick out a toy or two to help keep you from getting bored in the car," she instructed, and before long had them all downstairs awaiting Erik's return.

It was quite something to watch the mass of steel which had been the poolside furniture come soaring in from the west, Erik gliding through the air above it. _If he's going to do the Superman thing, he **really** ought to get a cape._

"Oh—oh, gosh!" Pietro gaped at the sight.

Wanda's grip on her hand tightened as she stared. "Poppa can fly?"

"There's more magic in the world than you know," she said, reaching out to give their shoulders a squeeze.

The metal pulled apart like taffy and reformed into poolside furniture again, dripping with saltwater from a cleansing immersion. No suspicious bloodstains would remain.

"Are we all ready, then?" he said, landing next to them.

"As we'll ever be." Raven smiled at him.

"Good. We'll have to swing by my hotel for my suitcase, but that won't take long."

"But where are we going?" Wanda asked, skipping to keep up.

"Eventually, New York." They entered the garage, and Erik opened the trunk with a wave of his hand, a gesture not lost on his children, loaded in the luggage, and shut it once more. "Along the way, however…There is a stop I would like to make, but it depends on your mother."

"What stop is that?" Raven asked.

"Las Vegas." He reached out and took her hands. "Roberta-Robin-Raven-Rowan-Darkholme, everyone you have been, all that you are, and everyone who you will be in the years to come, will you be mine? Will you marry me?"

Pietro's jaw dropped open. "Oh! Oh, gosh!" He brought his hands together with a loud smack. "Gosh!" That night clearly had him at a loss for words.

Wanda screwed her eyes, her fists and her entire face up, grinning for all she was worth. "EEEeeeeeee!" she squealed. "_Please_ say yes, Mama, pleasepleaseplease!"

"Of course I will." He leaned forward to claim her with a kiss as their children cheered.

When they parted, she smiled at Erik. "Boy, will Simon ever love the headlines: 'Actress Marries Father of Her Children!' A million dollars of publicity right there!"

"That may not be possible, my dear. It may be that 'Roberta Rowan' will have to disappear—forever."

"Oh." She considered it. "I've enjoyed this life—but not so much that it would kill me to leave it." Opening up the car door, she slipped in. "Get in the car, my dears. You see, I came out to Hollywood determined to become rich and famous because I thought I would never have what I really wanted."

"What was it you wanted, Mama?" Wanda asked.

"A family."

"But you've got a family. You have us." Pietro put in.

"Yes, I do." She reached back and ruffled his hair. "So—how do we get out of here without being followed?"

"That's easy. First of all, every one should fasten their seat belts. I bought this Ford for a reason, and the safety belts were it." He drove out of the garage and stopped before reaching the gate which led to the street. "Everyone hang on—." The front end of the Ford tipped up, and they flew off into the night.


	18. The End?

"Tch." said one of the women who acted as waiting room attendants at The Little White Chapel, as another shook out the dress Raven had unpacked. "It's very plain, for a silk dress. Of course, you see everything in this job, but this might as well be a flour sack."

"M-Mabel." said the woman who was holding it. "Look at the label!"

"Just a second, let me put on my reading glasses. 'Atelly-air Channel, Paris.' Yeah?"

"You aren't reading it right. Atelier Chanel. You know, like Chanel Number Five?"

"Oh, my gawd! Don't go dropping it, honey! You know, now that I have my reading glasses on, I can see it's got a lot of style, like. I mean, in a simple way."

"Who do you suppose she is?"

"She looks familiar—but she won't take off those dark glasses. Do you suppose—?"

Raven, slipping out of her clothing in the booth, smiled wryly to herself. The question wasn't what clothing to wear, not when one had in one's suitcase an off-white shantung silk dress with immaculate lines, a knee length skirt, elbow length sleeves and a high neckline, designed by Mademoiselle Coco Chanel herself, or what jewelry—her best pearls—but what_ face_ to wear.

The question of what identity she would be using after this was entirely open-ended, but she had several sets of identification in a hidden compartment of her jewelry case. 'Regina Blackwood' was the name she would be married under, which was Roberta Rowan's 'real' name—to give her an open door back into that life. A large pair of sunglasses and a long gossamer scarf on her hair completed her 'disguise.'

"I'm ready now!" she called, and the women entered.

"Here you are, miss!" They held it up, and lowered it over her head.

A pang of sadness shot through her—it should have been Madelaina who performed that service for her. _Of course, looked at another way, it should be my mother who helped me dress for my wedding. I wonder if they ever miss me—but that was long ago and far away, and as far as they're concerned, I'm worse than dead_. After all, they wanted me dead.

_But that isn't what I should be thinking about right now. I'm getting married. He's handsome, strong, intelligent, a good father—and more important, he loves me. As I am. He even finds me beautiful. And I love him. I'm so happy…_

She adjusted the scarf and dabbed a clear gloss on her lips. Looking at herself in the mirror, she thought, _No. There's something wrong. He's marrying **me**. Not Roberta Rowan. If he can find it in himself to love me as I am—can't I find the courage to marry him as I am? Without any hiding what I am? There's only the one officiant and a single witness and it's two in the morning. _

"I just need a moment." She shut the curtains again, and closed her eyes.

* * *

_I'm getting married. Again._ Erik waited in the chapel lobby with two children who were too excited to be sleepy. He had a small bouquet of white roses for Raven, and a corsage of pink ones for Wanda, who was taking one of them apart to strew on the ground in front of her mother. He was holding Pietro under his arm, as Raven had warned him about what happened when his son got over-excited.

"Climbing the walls is not an exaggeration." she had said. "You have to pick him and hold him so his feet aren't touching the ground."

_She's the most beautiful creature I have ever known—inwardly and outwardly. If only the rest of the world could appreciate it…_

_The world will have to change, and I will make it change. Until Raven no longer needs to hide her splendor. I am not like Charles. I will not settle for a world that merely tolerates us. They will not respect us until they fear us. Our children, and all the other mutant children in this world, must and will inherit a planet where they can walk with dignity and pride in who and what they are._

"Well, did you ever!" huffed a woman exiting the bride's dressing room. "What would she go and do that for?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Mabel. Serves her right if that makeup ruins her dress. And a Chanel, too!"

A moment later, Raven—not Robin, but Raven, blue as a kingfisher's plumage, stepped out and smiled at him, uncertainly. "I—uh, realized at the last moment I didn't have anything blue." The creamy silk of her dress and scarf set off her skin in the same way fresh snow set off the sky, and she was at once both slim and curvy.

"Mama, you look beautiful!" gasped Wanda.

Pietro looked around from his vantage point under his father's arm. "And blue!"

"I couldn't possibly approve more—or be prouder of you. Everything seems to be in order—I have the license, the rings, and—this is for you." He held out the white roses.

"Thank you." She took them and sniffed at them, sending him a flirtatious golden glance over her dark glasses.

The justice of the peace gave them a funny look and sniffed. "Well—first time I've seen this, but to each their own. Are you ready?"

"Yes." "Yes." "Yes!" Wanda leapt up in the air, tossing her rose petals like confetti.

"You might want to put the boy down for this." The officiant gave them a funny look again. "Are they the bride's children or the groom's, or what?"

"Both!" Pietro righted himself.

"I'm a widower and my late wife was their birth mother. They—ah, took to my fiancée very quickly." Erik explained.

"Very well." The man consulted the license. "Regina Blackwood, do you take Erik Lensherr to be to be your lawfully wedded husband; to live together with him in the covenant of marriage? Do you promise to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, to be faithful unto him as long as you both shall live?"

"I do."

"Erik Lensherr, do you take Regina Blackwood to be your lawfully wedded wife; to live together with her in the covenant of marriage? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, to be faithful unto her as long as you both shall live?"

"I do."

" I now pronounce you man and wife. Congratulations. You may kiss the bride."

Erik didn't hesitate. He took Raven in his arms and kissed her thoroughly while Wanda and Pietro cheered and danced around.

About three days later, Charles Xavier was having breakfast on the terrace of his mansion in Salem Center, and musing over his plans to convert his home into a school for mutants, when the front gates to the estate opened of their own accord. He set down his glass of juice and walked over to get a better look. _Erik, is that you?_, he asked, telepathically.

_It certainly is_, was the reply. _And I've brought the family._

_You ought to know there have been some very peculiar news articles about that in the papers_. Xavier sent to him.

_I can explain all that._ The car came to a stop in the driveway, and a small silver-haired boy burst out of the back seat like a cork out of a champagne bottle, followed by a red-haired girl in a red and white dress. Erik himself got out of the driver's seat, and immediately went around to the passenger's side to hand out an exquisitely beautiful young woman who was _not_ Roberta Rowan.

This girl, looking fresh and dewy as a pink rose on its stem in a long slim pink dress and a little white cardigan with a whole garden of flowers on it, had glossy dark hair and an entirely different face, a sweeter, younger looking face. She tucked her hand in Erik's arm and tilted her head to smile up at him, a frivolous green hat clinging to the side of her head as if she had tucked a lily pad behind her ear.

Mounting the steps to the terrace, the children skipping alongside, Erik led the young woman (who could easily have won the prize for Best Legs in Hollywood of 1956) up to his friend. "Raven, my dear, I want you to meet Charles Xavier. Charles, this is Raven, my wife."

"A pleasure to meet you." She extended her hand to him.

"Likewise—although it's quite a surprise. Won't you sit down?" He gestured to the table.

"In a moment. Is there somewhere a small child might—."

"The nearest lavatory is just one door down, inside the French doors." Xavier informed him.

"Thank you, but that wasn't what I was going to say." Erik was interrupted by the little girl, who tugged at his jacket.

"I have to go to the bathroom too, Poppa!" she whispered.

"Is there somewhere she can cause a disaster which won't destroy anything you'll miss? The power builds up and starts manifesting itself after a while."

"Ah. There is a tree stump over there…"

"There you go, sweetheart. Magic away!" She gestured at it, and the stump—disintegrated explosively into a lot of rotten slivers.

"Very well done, Wanda. Charles, where did you say that lavatory was?"

"I know! I've already been there and come back." volunteered the boy. Xavier hadn't even seen him move. Clearly both of Erik's offspring were mutants.

"Then you can show your sister while the grownups talk." Erik's wife informed him.

"All right, Mama." The siblings headed into the house.

Raven sat on a bench, and the gentlemen followed her example.

"I'm sure you would like to know what happened to Roberta Rowan, and how I come to be here with Raven today." Erik began. "That is perhaps better shown than told. My dear…?"

"Of course." Her pretty features contorted briefly, and her hair brightened, reddening—. Suddenly Roberta Rowan was sitting there, in the flesh. "You see, I am Roberta Rowan—and I'm a mutant. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"

"Extraordinary," Xavier managed.

"Yes. She is." Erik beamed at his wife. _He has it bad_, the telepath realized. _This is a man in love. _Looking at her, he was heartened to see she had the same look about her.

Continuing, Erik nodded at Xavier. "He's entirely trustworthy, my dear. In every way."

"All right." She looked Xavier straight in the eye. "Neither of the faces you've seen so far is the real me. This—is the real me." She changed again, her features returning to their original configuration—and turning blue, the same vibrant, intense blue of a peacock's breast feathers. Her eyes turned daisy-center yellow.

"Good heavens," exclaimed Xavier, startled. "You're a full-blown metamorph."

"This is the first time I've seen you in bright sunlight." Erik's attention was focused on her. "It suits you. You—sparkle in it."

She smiled at him, giddily, and he reached out, took her hand, and kissed it.

Xavier shifted in his chair, made uncomfortable by the sheer intensity of their affection for each other. _I truly don't feel like I should be watching this… _To cover his discomfort, he cleared his throat. "Not that it's not good to see you, but going by the headlines, I'm sure this is more than just a social call."

"You're right." Erik turned back to his friend. "We're in a bit of a fix, you see."

"You know, I think I should go see what the children are doing." Raven said. "If you'll excuse me…"

A few hours later, after all the explanations had been made, Raven was unpacking in the guest bedroom they would share when Erik came upstairs. "Will he help us?" she asked, unfolding a blouse and hanging it up.

"There was never any doubt about that. Charles is as true and good a man as any living…I am afraid that in casting in your lot with me, you will find yourself facing more dangers to come. I hope you never regret it."

"Crossing the street is dangerous." She shrugged. "But if one doesn't do it, one never gets anywhere. I—would rather go places, and do things."

"I'm very glad to hear you say it." Erik came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. "Speaking of doing things—the most frustrating aspect of the trip here hasn't been the driving, or spending all that time in the car with two small and bored children—it's been sharing a bed with you and being unable to express my feelings because Pietro and Wanda are in the next bed.

"May I point out that they aren't there now? In fact, they have their own rooms again."

"I had noticed that."

"So—Express away!"

And so he did.

Here is where this story ends, or at least pauses, not with a happy ending, because all marriages end unhappily, in death or divorce, but with a happy beginning, and a lot of love. To be sure, there are a great many questions left unanswered, but they may be resolved in time. Since this is my story, I can say that this bond will not break on a trailer floor with sacrifice and betrayal—but how or when—not even I know.

The End…?


End file.
